Bloody Rose

by Nicholas Eames

  “That’s right,” Rose answered.

  By now most of the room was listening in, which meant that most of the room laughed when she said so—even the Outlaws. Everyone except Fable themselves, in fact.

  Linden laughed hardest of all. “I can’t believe it!” he cried, once he’d regained his breath. “I mean, I’d heard you were craven. Every merc in Grandual knows that Bloody Rose couldn’t start a fistfight with a trash imp without a mouthful of Lion’s Leaf.”

  Freecloud shifted, preparing to rise, but Rose clamped his hand to the table.

  Linden scoffed, and Tam could smell the liquor on his breath even from so far away. “The Simurg, though? You can’t be serious. The least you could do is come up with something reasonable. Hells, they say the Winter Queen is back from the dead—why don’t you go hunting her instead?”

  “Show me the contract,” said Rose. “I’ll bring you her head.”

  Another uneasy smatter of laughter came and went.

  “You were in Ardburg when the Horde hit Cragmoor.” Gale’s voice was angry, accusing. “You should be at Coldfire right now, along with every other merc who could make it in time, ready to give that whoreson Brontide a taste of mercenary might.”

  “Whoreson?” Freecloud’s good cheer hadn’t quite vanished yet. “Really, Linden? That seems a poor choice of word, considering.”

  “Fuck yourself, rabbit.” Gale spat on the floor, and then stooped to leer in Rose’s face. “But here you are in Highpool, making a big fucking deal of yourself. Well, you ain’t that big o’ deal, Rose. You’re a coward who’d rather get paid instead of admitting there ain’t enough Lion’s Leaf in the world for you to face another Horde. Not after what happened at Castia.”

  A wiser man might have said his piece and walked away. But Linden Gale, as it happened, was not a wise man.

  “Your father would be ashamed,” he added. “Golden Gabe would never run from a Horde. He crossed the Heartwyld to save you from the last one, and he’d be at Coldfire now if he wasn’t babysitting your half-breed bastar—”

  He shut up then, because Rose’s fist was halfway down his throat.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Bard and the Beast

  Gale swallowed the rest of his sentence, along with most of his teeth. He staggered back, lashing out with a meaty fist, and caught Rose’s jaw with the heel of his palm. She might have fallen had Freecloud not been there to prop her up.

  Cura was on her feet, then the table, then airborne. She landed on Gale’s back and started boxing his ears. Roderick, doing his best impersonation of a body suddenly deprived of its skeleton, went slithering beneath the table.

  Linden’s bandmates leapt to his aid. Two of them jumped Brune as he stood, dragging the shaman to the floor and raining down blows as Penny screamed obscenities. Another one hoisted a chair above his head and looked for the weakest target he could find.

  Me, Tam realized, too late.

  Freecloud vaulted the table, putting himself in the chair’s path. As it broke across his shoulders, the druin, impossibly fast, caught a splintered leg before it spun away. He whirled and smote Tam’s assailant across the temple, dropping him.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. Have I mentioned I love your hair?”

  “You haven’t, no.”

  “I do,” said Freecloud. “It suits you.”

  By now he was surrounded. The druin spent a moment assessing his aggressors: three men and one very muscular woman. For a heartbeat the five of them—the gang and the ganged upon—seemed rooted to the spot, but then Freecloud, with the feral glee of a fox in a chicken coop, exploded into motion.

  Rose, on the other hand, didn’t bother waiting to be preyed upon. She socked the closest merc to her (who, to be fair, had been wearing an especially threatening scowl) and threw herself low at another man rushing at her with a bottle in hand.

  Cura had given up punching and opted to choke Linden Gale to the ground. It worked like a charm; the big man sagged to his knees, swatting futilely at the summoner’s ink-sleeved arm, before pitching face-first onto the tavern floor. The Inkwitch had barely gained her feet when Gale’s girlfriend jumped her from behind. The two of them went tumbling out of sight, but Tam could hear them screeching like a pair of cats behind a fishmonger’s stall.

  Pockets of fighting had erupted all over the Gnarled Staff, as mercenaries, Highpoolers, Outlaws, and those too drunk to remember which of those factions they belonged to picked sides in the melee. The serving staff crouched behind the bar like soldiers on the ramparts of a city under siege. There’d been a trio of musicians onstage when the brawl started, and instead of fleeing for cover they played determinedly on. To their credit, they even upped the tempo to better suit the chaos of the common room.

  Motion in her periphery drew Tam’s eye: Roderick reached up from beneath the table, fumbling from one item to the next until he found the arm of his tankard, then pulled it to safety below.

  Brune was down, rolling among tipped-over chairs and discarded bottles as he tangled with half a dozen assailants. Penny leapt to his defense, seizing a woman by the hair and dragging her from the pile. The two of them grappled for a moment before Penny threw a haymaker that sent the woman crashing into the bar.

  Brune had just gained his knees when Gord Lark, the Wererats’ scrawny frontman, smacked him across the face with the flat of his shield. The shaman’s head snapped back, and Lark flipped his shield sideways, angling it for a chop at Brune’s exposed throat.

  Tam reached Lark in time to wrench the shield from the man’s bony grip, though she found herself at a loss as to what to do next.

  Lark offered one alternative. “Gimme that back!”

  “Come and take it,” she snarled.

  Come and take it? Tam’s inner voice harangued her. Why the hell did you say that? What if he comes? What if he takes it?

  She cringed behind the stolen shield as Lark lashed out, and was gratified to hear his knuckles crack against the iron-studded oak. While the merc bemoaned his busted fingers, the bard hefted the shield and brought it down hard on his head.

  “Fuurgk,” he remarked, then his eyes rolled back and he collapsed in a heap.

  Edwick had told her once that Slowhand, Golden Gabe’s lesser-known sidekick, used a shield called Blackheart in battle rather than an actual weapon. Though not completely sold on the notion, Tam had to admit that a heavy slab of wood certainly had its uses.

  Brune was back on his feet. He sidestepped the rush of a wailing attacker and used the man’s momentum to heave him headlong over a nearby table, then raised an arm to deflect a ceramic plate. The woman who’d tossed it lobbed two more, but went scampering off once she ran out of dishware. When one of the men he’d downed earlier climbed groggily to his knees, the shaman grasped his neck in one huge hand and hoisted him, legs thrashing, off the ground.

  The man gurgled a plea for mercy, but Brune’s reply was a growl so deep it set Tam’s hair on end. Terror fluttered like a bird against her ribs. She looked from the Wererat’s rapidly purpling face to Brune’s. Fear and ferocity warred across the shaman’s features. His eyes seized Tam’s, wild with desperation.

  “No,” Brune grated behind a cage of clenched teeth.

  The Wererat fumbled for the knife strapped to his chest.

  “I can’t …”

  A slash drew blood from the shaman’s arm.

  “Can’t … Tam … run—” Brune managed, before the cage of clenched teeth sprang open, and the beast within came raging out.

  The shaman’s face transformed in an instant, broadening beneath swatches of coarse brown fur. His arms bulged, the muscles rippling like snakes in a sack. The hand around the Wererat’s throat doubled in size. Claws like black knives punched from shaggy, padded paws. Brune’s tunic shredded as his body underwent a catastrophic change. What began as a snarl of defiance became an earsplitting roar that hushed the entire room at once.

  For the space o
f a breath, anyway.

  Then the screaming began.

  The place dissolved into pandemonium. Doors and windows became clogged for the press of bodies eager to escape the room. Even the musicians forsook their song and fled the stage. Weapons were drawn, steel blooded by guttering lamplight.

  Tam felt something jar her arm and looked down to find a serrated steak knife quivering in her shield. She wrenched it loose, briefly considered using it to defend herself, but decided that stabbing someone in a bar fight wasn’t something she’d feel good about tomorrow morning, so she tossed the knife to the floor.

  Brune roared again, a sound like plate armour tearing along a rusted seam. His hands spasmed open, and the man dangling in the shaman’s grasp pulled free and tried to scurry away. The beast knocked him to the ground, speared his calf with its claws, and pinned him there as it mauled him with its jaws.

  Glancing over her shoulder, Tam saw Freecloud helping Cura to her feet. The summoner’s lip was split, and she was cradling her head as though stunned. Rose was scrambling against a mob of fleeing patrons. The frontwoman was shouting, but her voice was drowned out by the noise all around them: shrieks and stamping feet, the thunderous tread of paws pounding across wooden floorboards …

  Tam wheeled to find Brune charging directly at her. The shaman’s massive head was levelled like a battering ram. She barely had time to lift her shield before the impact sent her soaring. Her ankles caught on a bench seat, her back slammed hard on a tabletop. Her momentum kept her rolling—a lucky thing, since she flipped over the opposite side as the beast crashed through the table, cracking it in half, hurling cups and cutlery skyward.

  She kept moving, rolling out from beneath a wooden bench an instant before it was smashed to splinters. She scrambled to her feet, took two sprinting steps to the next table over, and slid on her hip across it, which must’ve looked pretty fucking cool until she slipped, flailing, off the other side. The beast followed, crushing chairs to kindling, ploughing through cedar planks like they were palm fronds.

  Tam, from her knees, saw a black iron boot stamp the table in front of her, then Rose was vaulting overhead, a moon-bright scimitar in either hand. She slapped the flat of one sword against the beast’s head, dazing him, then smacked it hard with the other. Its eyes lolled. Blood spilled in strands from its frothing jaws, but the stupor was momentary.

  It swiped at her with one huge paw. Rose turned her blade so its edge scored the pad on his palm. It tried to bite her, but she danced wide, and brought the rune-traced flat of both swords hammering against its skull.

  Rose had expected to knock it out, Tam guessed, since she was woefully unprepared when he attacked instead. The warrior clattered to the floor with four fresh gouges in her black iron breastplate. The beast that wasn’t Brune pounced before she could recover, but Tam hurled herself into its path, crouched behind her stolen shield. The snout bashed into it and drove her sliding backward across the floor, kicking wildly to keep her legs away from those awful jaws. She hit something—Rose—and the two of them snowballed ahead of the raging goliath, crashing together into the stone base of a buttressing pillar.

  Rose swore and swung above Tam’s head, opening a gash in the beast’s snout. It reared onto its haunches, bellowing in fury.

  Tam’s eyes caught the glint of metal near the monster’s feet. A pellet of some sort, or …

  A vial.

  It was the one Branigan had given her on the morning after Fighter’s Camp. “The Bard’s Last Refrain,” he’d called it. Tam had put it in the pocket of her new coat shortly afterward and hadn’t thought of it since.

  I could use it on Brune, she thought. If I can get to it, that is …

  She would need a distraction. Something to draw the beast’s attention long enough for her to recover the quill inside. Maybe Rose could—

  “Brune, stop!”

  The beast whirled and lashed out at the woman who’d dared to lay a hand on its ragged flank.

  Tam froze in a crouch, staring in mute horror as ribbons of red bloomed across Penny’s chest. The girl’s blouse was in shreds, her eyes wiped of everything save the shock of pain and betrayal.

  Move, Tam told herself, now!

  She dropped the shield and dived forward, skidding between the bear’s hind legs. She plucked up the vial and yanked its halves apart. The quill slipped out, bouncing once on its end before Tam swiped it from the air and plunged it as hard as she could into the beast’s flank.

  It staggered, turning ponderously to regard her with beady black eyes. It attempted a roar that emerged as a yawn instead, then collapsed on top of her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Some Wild Thing

  They’d entered Highpool like heroes returning from conquered lands, but left it like thieves desperate to escape the gallows. Rose and Freecloud purchased a pair of spare horses from Elfmin, who bore them no ill will despite the havoc they’d caused. Rod disappeared for a while and arrived outside the inn driving a cart drawn by two sturdy Kaskar ponies.

  Good idea, Tam thought, since Brune was a burden and neither she nor Cura were in any shape to ride a horse in the dark.

  “Please tell me you didn’t steal this.” Freecloud’s face was wary in the torchlight.

  “Of course I didn’t steal it!” The satyr rounded the wagon, inspecting the bed. He was chewing lazily on what looked like a sequined slipper. “I bought it. And cheap, too.”

  Rose looked suspicious as well. “From who?”

  Rod plucked a severed hand from inside and tossed it casually over one shoulder. “Corpse collector.”

  “Are you serious?” Cura was nursing a bloody lip and a swollen left eye. She’d come out worse than any of them—except for Brune, obviously, who’d returned to human form bearing a serious goose egg, a vicious slice across the bridge of his nose, and bruises colouring most of his face.

  Don’t forget Penny, Tam’s mind chimed in. The girl would live, apparently, but she would bear the scars of Brune’s attack for the rest of her life, inside and out. Tam’s injuries were much less severe. Her ribs ached, and her head felt like some spiteful gambler was rattling dice against the inside of her skull. Still, she’d got off easy considering a monstrous bear had landed on her not half an hour ago.

  “You couldn’t find anything nicer?” Cura asked.

  Roderick spit out a silver button. “Whaddaya want, a gilded carriage? We’re trying to be inconspicuous here.”

  “It’s fine,” said Rose. “Cloud, help me get Brune on board. Rod, take the Redoubt north. We’ll meet you in Coltsbridge. Tell the Widow’s man we had something to take care of first.”

  “Who’s the Widow?” Tam asked. “And where are we going?”

  “The Widow is our contact in Diremarch,” Rose said, then made a gesture that encompassed the unconscious shaman, Cura’s battered face, the smashed windows of the inn behind them, and the fact that they were skulking in disgrace from a city that had welcomed them with open arms just two days ago. “We’re going to make sure this never happens again,” she said.

  “We should teach you to fight,” Freecloud said to Tam over breakfast the following morning. The two of them were seated by a dwindling fire, eating quail-egg hash out of wooden bowls and sharing a clay pitcher of Bryton’s apple cider back and forth. Rose and Cura, whose monthly cycles had synced after so long together, had gone searching for a creek in which to rinse. They’d found one nearby, Tam guessed, since she could hear their voices whenever the wind picked up. Brune was still out cold in the bed of the corpse cart. According to what Bran had told her, it might be several hours yet before the quill’s effects wore off.

  “Why?” Tam asked. “I’m just a bard.”

  “You’re the Bard,” Freecloud reminded her. A wry smile snagged his lips as he speared a wedge of potato with the tip of his knife. “Besides, bards hide under tables. They climb trees, or cower in bushes, or run for the hills at the first sign of trouble. They don’t take on professional mercen
aries with nothing but a shield. They don’t bring down bears. Or a cyclops, for that matter.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “I know,” he cut her off. “But still.”

  Tam gazed down at her bowl. Once, a few years ago, she’d dared to drag her father’s sword out from under his bed. She’d spent the afternoon practicing with it, swinging the heavy blade until her arms ached, and when Tuck had come home she’d been standing in the kitchen, brandishing it overhead like some triumphant hero.

  He’d been upset, to say the least. He’d wrested the sword from her hands and hacked one of the chairs (the one Bran used to sit in) to pieces. Though perhaps not a master class in sensible parenting, the lesson had been an effective one. Tam had been afraid to pick up a sword ever since.

  “Okay,” she said eventually. “Sure.”

  The druin’s eyes—usually a deep, emerald green—went the colour of a sunlit leaf. “Excellent.” He reached for the cider and took a long swig, baring his teeth at the tartness. “This doesn’t mean you’re off the hook when it comes to being our bard. If I so much as step on a lizard you’d better tell the world I kicked a dragon to death. Sound good?”

  She nodded. “Sounds good.”

  “Rose can teach you the sword,” he said. “I’ll show you how to hold that bow of yours properly.”

  “I—”

  “No you don’t,” he cut her off again. Damn, but the prescience could be annoying sometimes. “Anyhow,” the druin went on, “it’s best you learn to protect yourself. We’re not on tour anymore. If something happens, we won’t have Doctor Dan to patch us up. Things could get dangerous from here on out.”

  Tam stood, swiped the crumbs from her lap, and went to retrieve her bow. “Let’s get started, then,” she said.

  They travelled east, winding through wooded foothills along a track Tam suspected had been made by goatherds. Rose and Freecloud led the way on horseback, while Tam and Cura took turns driving the corpse cart. Brune remained unconcious in the wagon’s bed, rendered death-like by the effect of the will’o’wisp’s quill.