by Dave Duncan
Stalwart left him and spun around with a wild slash that wasn’t in the Ironhall repertoire at all—except that instinct was always permitted and in this case the windmill stroke parried a lunge from Foster, who hadn’t expected it and obviously didn’t know one end of a sword from another. Before he could even go to guard, Stalwart feinted at his eyes with the remains of the archlute and slipped the sword in underneath it to cut his throat.
He turned again with a backward spring away from Thrusk’s downward cut, staggering as his feet refused his orders. No one else in the room had even moved a step yet, but this affair had better be settled quickly. He threw the archlute ruin like a javelin. Thrusk let it bounce harmlessly off his armor and lunged, sending Stalwart back yet again. There was very little room here, and if he let himself be cornered he would be a fond memory. He feinted, was parried, and lunged again, very nearly losing an ear. He was fencing like a cripple! Thrusk showed his teeth in a grin. Parry, riposte, parry…Lily, Violet…clang—clang—clang—The man’s strength and reach were incredible. Eggbeater. One misjudgment and this flimsy thrusting sword would be cut in half. Clang—clang—
He would have to gamble the farm on one roll of the dice.
In desperation he discarded Chefney’s advice and reached for Sir Quinn’s Fancy Stuff. There was one compound attack called Beartrap that would work best—if it worked at all—for a short man against a very tall opponent. Stalwart lunged, parried, feinted, and ducked under Thrusk’s riposte to cut at his right leg, slicing through his boot just above the knee as if he were carving meat. (Thank you, Snake, for giving me a sword with an edge!) The hamstring parted; Thrusk cried out and toppled. Even better—as he sprawled forward and Stalwart straightened, for an instant Thrusk had his head back to expose a glimpse of naked throat under his beard. Stalwart rammed his sword in past the collarbone, down among lungs and gullet and major blood vessels. The weapon was almost wrenched out of his hand as Thrust completed his fall, face-first into the floor, but that just meant that the blade was able to do more damage in there.
It was done! It was over! He was bubbling so hard with excitement that he could barely keep from dancing. That was what a real fight was like? And the battle was a long way from over yet. Sir Hawkney had told him that after the Night of Dogs he hadn’t been able to sit down for two days.
He kicked Thrusk’s helmet. “Die, you dreg!” he shouted. “You hear me, brute? You’re dying. I killed you. I wish I could do it again.”
24
Flight
SORRY ONLY THAT HE COULD NOT GLOAT longer over the death throes, he turned to survey the glazed eyes and open mouths of the five spectators. Obviously they had never seen a Blade in action before. One boy and two dead or dying men, and it had taken less than a minute. Skuldigger still wore his sword.
“I told you to throw down your weapons!” Unfortunately Stalwart’s voice came out as a shrill squeak.
That didn’t matter. Screaming in terror, the four traitors turned and rushed for the doorway with the woman in the lead. Emerald, bless her, stuck out a foot and tripped her. Skuldigger fell on her and the other two men jammed in the doorway. No time to laugh. No way to take hostages, either, because it might be days before Snake rode in.
“Let them go!” he shouted and headed for the fireplace.
Foster was unconscious, bleeding to death very messily—an incredible river of blood. Stalwart could feel sorry for him, because he had probably been tricked into being enslaved, and after that he would have had no choice.
He was not sorry for Thrusk, who had been just as bad before Skuldigger bespelled him. Incredibly, the giant had managed to sit up. He was hardly bleeding at all, just blowing red froth out from under his beard, gurgling and coughing blood. Stalwart went around him and took up the branding iron, resisting a powerful temptation to let Thrusk have a taste of it. He poked it into the roof instead.
Thrusk reached feebly for his fallen sword.
Stalwart kicked it out of reach. “I told you,” he said. “You’re dying! Outsmarted by a kid. I’m glad.” The antique thatch flared up. “Can’t stay to watch, but take all the time you want.”
Emerald was staring at Stalwart as if he’d sprouted antlers. “You really are a Blade! That was what I was detecting—all those years of training!”
“If you say so. Come on.” He pointed at Foster’s sword. “Bring that.”
He ran to the door and hurled the iron onto the roof of the next shack. The sea breeze was still blowing, and all the village thatch was old and dry. A good blaze or two would distract the pursuit. People were shouting in the distance, but no one had come in sight yet. The moon was…there…and just short of the full, so that was east. When they brought him in through the gate the sun had just set on his left so the river must be over…there. “This way!”
He stretched out his left hand behind him. “Hang on and don’t trip me with that sword, but keep it. You may need it.” It was dark in the alleyways and the footing was made treacherous by garbage, firewood, wheelbarrows, chicken coops—all sorts of clutter. He went as fast as he dared, feeling out the clearance with his sword and judging direction by the moon-light on the clouds.
“Wart, there are monsters out there!”
“There are worse monsters in here.”
He ducked under windows and turned away from candlelight spilling from doorways. He collided with a hurdle across his path and wakened a litter of piglets on the other side of it to terrified squealing. He kept heading west.
“There are two Sisters and a child, Wart! We can’t leave them.”
Oh, death and flames! “We must leave them! They’ll be safer here for a few more days than they will be out in the woods with us.” His job was to rescue Emerald and lead Snake to the traitors’ lair, in that order.
The shouting in the background was increasing, and sometimes when he looked back he could see two red pillars of sparks. Glowing fragments were floating away in the breeze, threatening half the village. With any luck Skuldigger and his cronies would concentrate their own efforts on putting out the fire and rely on the chimeras to catch the fugitives for them. With a lot more luck they would be wrong.
The unbroken wall on his right must be the palisade. “The gate’s that way,” he whispered, “but they’ll be watching it. We need a place to climb over.”
“Why not just push it down? It’s rotten.”
He tried a shoulder against it. “I’m not stalwart enough.” The individual posts might be no thicker than a man’s arm, but they were still sturdy hunks of timber.
“Keep trying. There are places where it’s mush.”
Emerald had seen it in daylight and probably seen more of it than he had. Together they crept along the perimeter of the village, hunting for a weak point, often having to detour around heaps of garbage. Unfortunately none of the obstacles was high enough to let them climb over the wall. As he began to worry that they were drawing too close to the gate and its inevitable guards, he almost collided with a pole angled across his path. Fumbling and peering, he made out that there were four of them, and they were bracing up a section of the palisade that was anxious to fall inward.
He handed his sword to Emerald and set to work. The props came loose easily enough. Then the wall sagged farther, but its cross-rails still held it together. He was certain his time was running out fast. He took up one of the props and tried to find a place he could insert it to use as a pry bar.
“Wart!”
“What?”
“There’s something out there!” Emerald’s voice was shrill.
“Good.” Got it!—he forced the lever between two posts. “Need all the help we can get.”
“Wart! I am telling you! There is a chimera outside that fence. And at least one more not far away.”
“Help me!” He heaved with all his strength.
Emerald, having her hands full of swords, put her shoulder to the pole. Timber groaned, and then a single post cracked off and toppled, bringi
ng two lengths of cross-rail with it. Not enough. He was about to put his lever back and try again when a wailing animal howl froze him solid. It went on and on until his scalp prickled. The lungs on that thing! Whatever was creating that racket was not close, but it must be big—very big.
Something grunted just outside the narrow gap he had made. He dropped the pole and grabbed his sword back. Another post creaked, snapped, and fell. No need to break out now. The thing outside was breaking in.
25
Fright
IT WAS UNFORTUNATE THAT THE MOON CHOSE that moment to wander into a cloud, so that Stalwart and Emerald, watching from behind a chicken coop some distance away, were unable to make out many details of what happened. Or perhaps that was fortunate. Whatever the new-comer looked like, it roared and growled, it made the entire stockade shake, it broke off posts and threw them away like straws. And finally it lurched in through the gap it had created and paused to sniff and snuffle. It was about the size of a bull and seemed uncertain whether it should stand on two legs or four. Its bushy tail was as large as a feather bed. Eventually it decided to go straight ahead and lumbered off between two huts.
Stalwart wiped his forehead. He managed to swallow at his third attempt. The weapon of choice against a thing like that would be a lance with warhorse and full plate mail included. “I am inclined to get out of here.”
“Wait for the next one,” Emerald whispered. They were kneeling very close together and he could feel her shaking. He had an arm around her, was why. She had one around him and they could shake in unison. “It’s coming.”
“You’re sure? The fire must have drawn them.” He could hear it. The sky was red over the center of the village.
“Possibly, but also they’ve eaten the fens bare. They either have to go after farmers’ livestock or come back here. They’re spelled to stay away, but hunger—”
“Sh!” Something was snuffling outside the stockade. The moonlight was brightening rapidly.
A couple of houses away someone screamed terribly—the newcomer had made its presence known. Then the second chimera entered. It leaped through the gap and ran after the first one so quickly that Stalwart wasn’t quite sure what he’d seen. It was bigger than the first. A rat with arms walking on its hind legs would about sum it up. Tusks? Well, he wasn’t sure about the tusks. Its tread had made the ground tremble.
“Let’s go,” he said, finding his throat drier than ever. “Outside is the lesser of two evils.”
“I wish I knew that,” Emerald said, but she was with him as he scrambled through the gap in the stockade. “You’re not going to go right out in the woods, are you?”
“I’m going back to report to Snake. I’m going to hand you over to him and tell him I’ve brought you back safe and sound, so I’ve carried out my mission and please can I go off and do something much safer for the next ten years, like guarding the King from attacks by lion-size dogs….” He followed the stockade around, through a young growth of saplings and spindly weeds, hoping he might find an unguarded boat on the river. “And he can take his Old Blades and turn them into sausages for all I care.”
“Wart! You’ll—I’m sorry! I should be calling you ‘Sir Stalwart.’”
“My friends still call me Wart.” And my enemies die! “And you’re going to be Sister Emerald again—if you still want to be.”
“Ha! I shall tell Mother Superior she can stuff her precious Sisters and use them for garden furniture.”
He chuckled and said, “Sh!” There were voices ahead. He crept forward as quietly as he could. All dry twigs near the settlement had long since been gathered up for kindling, but total silence was still impossible.
“There’s more chimeras around,” Emerald whispered.
“Which way?”
“Hmm…All around.”
He reached the corner of the stockade and knelt to peer along the waterfront. With the tide out a silvery trickle in the center of the channel was all that remained of the river. The rest was black mud. There could be no thought of boating home.
The voices he had heard came from a gang of men gathering water to fight the fire. They were too few to form a proper chain. The one on the end filled a bucket and trudged over to meet the next, who gave him an empty one in exchange, then walked the full one to the next man, and so on. They were all quite visible in the moon-light and the glow of the fire. Their cause seemed hopeless. Probably they were trying to wet down the other roofs and the village wells couldn’t keep up with demand.
“I’m going to take my shoes off,” Stalwart whispered. “That mud’ll suck ’em off if I don’t. It’ll be horrible going but still easier than trying to force a way through the brush.” They would have moonlight; the woods were dark.
“Wart, Wart! That is crazy! We’ll wander for days and days and go around in circles.”
“You do that if you want,” he said, pulling off his left shoe. “I’m going back the way we came.” Right shoe. “Didn’t you take note?”
“I got dizzy in the first few minutes.” Emerald was removing her shoes too. Perhaps girls just enjoyed arguing. There were no girls at Ironhall, but there would be lots of them at court.
“When we embarked we went to the left and the village was on the left bank. We passed six channels on the right and only two on the left. So we go right, stay on this bank, cross channels twice, and then look for our tracks. If we can’t find those, we’ll cut inland at dawn. Ready?”
She stood up, holding her shoes. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
“Oh yes. Also brave, handsome, witty, charming, trustworthy, and modest. Now let’s—”
Two chimeras burst out of the trees on the far bank and flashed across the empty channel. The bucket gang fled, screaming, but one of them was run down. A chimera knocked him flat, and—as far as Stalwart could make out at that distance—bit through his spinal cord with its beak. Then it picked him up in its arms and walked back the way it had come. The second chimera seemed to have two heads. It loped on all fours into Quagmarsh and the gate remained open and unguarded behind it.
“Cloud!” Emerald said. “And Swan and her baby!”
“They’ll be all right. They can tell where the chimeras are, can’t they, just like you can? Besides, Skuldigger values them, so he’ll see they’re protected. Now let’s go.”
The mud made for horrible walking, every step sinking ankle deep into frigid muck full of rotten branches and old shells. But it was better than fighting through bushes, and there was room to see danger approaching—anything Emerald’s sensitivity missed. There was room to swing a sword.
The night was alive. Owls still hunted; the bat population was intact, with its creepy whistling cries. Chimeras were howling all over the fens, but Stalwart had no way of knowing whether they were calling to one another or just expressing rage and hunger. The fire’s glow remained visible behind them for a long time.
Emerald held her sword in her left hand and clung to him with her right, which he found quite flattering. He could even admit it was comforting under the circumstance, although poor tactics. It certainly was not a romantic moment. Their feet went squoosh—squoosh—squoosh…and monsters howled, arrrgh—arrrgh—
She began turning her head a lot, searching….
“Trouble?” he murmured.
“Close.” After a few more steps she muttered, “Very close.” Then she stopped. “Wart, we’re heading for a chimera. It’s just up ahead a little, waiting for us.”
He had that swallowing problem again. “Then it knows we’re here. Let’s keep going. We should just show it that we’re not afraid of it.”
“You show it. I’m scared to death.”
“So am I, but the chimera doesn’t know that.”
Her nails dug into his arm. “Wart! There!” She transferred her sword to her right hand.
It took him a moment to see what she had made out in the tricky silver moonlight. Something huge and dark stood within the trees, watchin
g them. If Thrusk had been a five-year-old, that is what he would have looked like when he grew up. Except its eyes were too far apart. It had a muzzle…and horns. It was furry. He couldn’t hope to win against that thing—chimeras were just too fast, too strong, and probably much too loathe to die. Obviously the thing Dreadnought had killed had been a chimera, but he had been one of three Blades at the start of the fight. The other two hadn’t won any jeweled stars to wear on their jerkins.
This was what real fear felt like. Hard to breathe.
Seeing that it had been noticed, the monster displayed a mouthful of fangs like an ivory chess set, and growled a low, rumbling, deathly sound.
“Speak to it!” Emerald said.
“Speak to it?”
“Poor wretch! He must have some human intelligence still lurking inside there. He should be at least as smart as a dog.”
Well, it was worth a try. Stalwart strained his throat to sound deep and commanding. “Go home!” He pointed back to the village. “Food there! Go home. Go to the Doctor. Doctor Skuldigger. He has food for you. Go home!” He added under his breath, “Eat him, for all I care…Bad Boy.”
The chimera turned its head to look where he had pointed.
“Go home!” Stalwart repeated. He went through the message again.
The monster threw back its head and uttered a great, long, pitiable howl that raised the hair on his neck. Then it vanished, without sound or any sense of motion. It just was not there any more.