Heart of Steel

by Samantha M. Derr

  He staggered for a moment, hands twitching at his sides, before falling limply to the ground. He did not move again.

  Katrina gasped.

  "W-what did I do?" Alais blurted, blinking in the sight of Maud above her.

  Maud eased her weight off slowly. "It's all right—"

  Recognition dawned in Alais's gaze. "Oh, Lord. I attacked you!" Alais sat up, shaking as she glanced about herself. Her eyes widened when she glimpsed her knife, discarded in the struggle against Maud. "I—how could I do that?"

  "You weren't yourself," Emelyne said. "He bewitched you as he bewitched Laurence. Katrina?"

  Katrina waved a hand. She, too, looked shaken, but not nearly as badly as Alais. "Been a while since I've had a man inside my head…"

  If the past minutes hadn't done it, the levity in her voice was the last straw for Maud. "Let's get you up." Grasping Alais's hands as gently as she could, Maud pulled her upright. "Are you hurt?"

  Alais shook her head.

  "Then I'm taking you home—"

  "We cannot leave just yet," Emelyne said, her tone cool and didactic, as though Maud had suggested something truly preposterous. "We may know who and how, but I'd still like to understand why a merchant playing with arcane forces decides to murder a whole family."

  "Did you not hear him?" Maud shot back. "He was blathering about a master of some sort. Probably thought himself in congress with the bloody Devil!"

  "We need proof."

  "Then you find it. You're the ones doing the Order's dirty work." Maud tightened her grip on Alais's arm. "Come—"

  "No." Alais dug her heels. "We— I'd like to help." Her eyes glistening with unshed tears, she looked up at Maud. "Please?"

  Maud gritted her teeth. She wanted nothing more than to throw Alais over her shoulder and carry her home by force—could do it, too, with Alais being so light and petite—but her free will had already been stripped away from her once tonight. To do it again would be the height of cruelty.

  She might have shed her vows, but Maud was still a knight. She released her grasp on Alais's arm.

  "Fine," she grunted, directing her vitriol toward Emelyne. "We'll find you your proof."

  *~*~*

  A cool wind had begun stirring the tree branches in the early afternoon. By dusk, the air had turned crisp and humid, heralding an oncoming storm. Maud's exhales turned to mist as she combed through the last of the merchant's wares.

  The torch's flickering light stung the eyes, but she preferred it to venturing into the dead man's tent with the others. Her fists still threatened to clench. The callow urge to challenge Emelyne or Katrina to a brawl thrummed within her, as unstoppable as it was repugnant.

  Knights of the Order of Saint Kilda didn't succumb to distemper. They were above mere frustration. Or they were meant to be.

  "What about these?" Alais asked, pushing to her feet. She approached the tent with a leather bag in hand, offering it up for Emelyne's perusal.

  The glow of lit candles limned Emelyne in gold, red hair lit up as though it was a crown of fire around her head.

  "They look like—"

  "Bones," Emelyne finished for Alais. As delicate as she appeared, Emelyne did not hesitate to dip a hand into the satchel and hold up its contents to the light. "Human bones. You see the score marks? They were deliberately etched with a blade."

  To Maud's surprise, Alais didn't shy from the gruesome sight. "What for?"

  "An enchantment of some sort. If I had to guess…" Emelyne glanced about the sprawl of utensils and personal effects upended all over the abbey grounds. The merchant's cargo presented a plethora of knickknacks. Trying to find something of worth among the minutia was as easy as finding a needle in a haystack. Undaunted, Emelyne stalked to one of the crates Maud had picked through without much success and selected a short dagger from the cluster of junk. "Here. This one looks about right."

  "A letter opener?" Alais asked, bemused.

  "Feel the handle." Before Alais could do so of her own will, Emelyne took her hand and placed the dagger in her grip. "You see how it leaches heat? It's enchanted. Bone and blood, the root of all dark rituals…" She frowned, peering at the blade in Alais's fist. "But…"

  "What is it?" Maud asked.

  "This is no mage-blade. There are no runes, no evidence that the steel was ever consecrated." The intricacies of the Order's arcane traditions had always confused Maud, and it was a relief when Emelyne aborted that train of thought. "No true student of the occult would use such an instrument," she explained, in layman's terms. "It would be like venturing into a duel armed with a butcher's cleaver."

  Maud scowled. "I thought you said he was a middling practitioner."

  "Yes, but—"

  "But nothing." Maud hopped down from the cart. "We've done our duty. The threat is gone. I care nothing for the methods he used to perpetrate his fowl deeds." And spending another hour in this frigid wind trying to make sense of a lowlife's practices was beyond what she could stomach. "I say we light it all up and be done with it."

  Emelyne thinned her lips. "He may have accomplices."

  "Are they here?"

  "No."

  "Then we burn it all and make sure they recover nothing." Maud hefted the torch. "Or do you object to that, too?"

  Emelyne narrowed her eyes as fierce gales whipped stray wisps of red hair across her face. Mercifully, she kept silent as she disappeared inside the tent. Half a dozen heartbeats later, she emerged with Katrina in tow. Neither one gave Maud more than a passing glance.

  Alais tossed aside the satchel, bones clattering like pebbles within. "I'll help."

  Together, they touched flickering torches to cartwheels and watched the flames lick up the wooden spokes with an otherworldly hunger.

  *~*~*

  Leaving the house at the break of dawn was meant to spare Maud from having to explain herself to anyone. She did not count Alais among those she sought to avoid; most days they woke up together and began their day at the same time. Maud would fetch water while Alais stirred the hearth fire and began to prepare their porridge. Or, if it was a Sunday and they could afford to delay the constant stream of chores to be done around the cottage, they'd spend an hour or two enjoying each other's company between the sheets.

  That wasn't possible with guests bedding down in the spare room, one blessed with keen hearing and the other with preternatural awareness.

  Maud had hoped they'd still be asleep as she let herself out of the cottage. No such luck.

  "Going into town?" Katrina asked from her perch on the windowsill. She did not believe in binding her hair, like Emelyne, or wearing it short, like Maud. Dark strands spilled down the shoulders of her riding coat, caressing the bend of her elbow as she puffed lazily on her smoke-pipe.

  "The woods," Maud retorted without glancing in her direction. The pale, naked lump in Katrina's bed, just visible around the crook of her knee, could only belong to Emelyne. She, at least, had the decency to feign sleep.

  Then again, perhaps she was genuinely exhausted. After their brush with the merchant, Emelyne had made good on her promise to Alais and ventured into town to speak out on Benjamin Laurence's behalf.

  She'd been there into the small hours, as word moved from door to door and ear to ear that recent acquisitions from a certain mysterious outsider were to be brought to and burned in the town square. Though it wasn't necessary, she had stayed to bathe the hands that had touched the wares in holy water.

  Maud strove to dig her heels in, but knowing the pains taken to prevent another calamity in Holsworth made it difficult to resent Emelyne's presence in her home. As pure as their actions appeared, Maud couldn't afford to trust her old sword-sisters. She had opened her door to two of the Order's most guileful agents. Even now, they had to be conspiring to lure her back into the fold.

  She tried to cling to that conviction as she stalked into the stables.

  Her mare was not best pleased to be put to work at such an hour. She whinnied and tossed
her head as Maud led her out, stomping a hoof in protest. To pacify her, Maud produced a carrot from her satchel. It was a modest peace offering, but sufficient to win her a modicum of goodwill.

  "You're going after the cattle," Katrina surmised.

  "Might as well."

  Beyond weariness, Emelyne had returned with news of strange happenings in Holsworth, whispers that the townspeople had confessed to her rather than Maud. Many were the product of carelessness—missing glasses, overturned buckets of milk, fractious wives—but one elderly farmer who lived not far from the forest had spoken of his animals disappearing in the night, seemingly without trace.

  For reasons that Maud couldn't fathom, Emelyne seemed to think his plight sincere. She had spoken of it before retiring to bed and, between the memory of her bloodshot eyes and a degree of frustration with mystery in general, Maud found it impossible to banish the thought from her mind.

  "I'll come with you."

  Before Maud could protest, Katrina snatched up her bow and quiver, and swung her legs over the windowsill, landing with a swish in the scraggly flowerbed below. "You could do with another pair of eyes."

  Subtle though it might have been, the insult stung. Maud glowered. "I don't need a ranger to track three bleeding cows."

  "Maybe, maybe not." Undaunted, Katrina saddled her own horse and mounted up.

  If Maud hadn't known better, she might have said that Katrina had risen early for this exact purpose. Suit herself. If Katrina wanted to endure a brisk morning ride and what was sure to be a brief retrieval, then that was her affair.

  They took off at a gallop, Maud leading the way and Katrina following in close pursuit. Yesterday's icy wind had morphed into rain during the night and the ground was soft with mud. By the time they traversed the moors to the thick sprawl of forest that arced around the grazing lands, their riding boots and trousers were already speckled with grime.

  The speed of the ride rendered conversation impossible. Even as they slowed down, a dark canopy of branches interlacing over their heads to blot out the leaden sky, silence persisted.

  Maud stroked a hand through her horse's chestnut mane, imparting what little reassurance she could. Thin blades of sunlight penetrated through the tree cover, alders and white oaks shuddering in the morning breeze. It would be another wet day on the moors, yet here, in the dark of the wood, the air was always damp.

  Rotted leaves and broken twigs crackled underfoot as Maud dismounted. She didn't bother liberating her scabbarded claymore from the saddle. She'd only brought it along as added security. The forest was familiar; Alais often ventured out in search of medicinal plants or berries for her pies. Maud had never sensed danger when she accompanied her. Past hunts had proved that she was the most dangerous predator to walk through the brush.

  Not today.

  Maud held up a head. Behind her, Katrina had already brought her mount to a still.

  "I hear it, too," Katrina whispered.

  "Human?" Maud asked, her hope floundering before she saw Katrina shake her head.

  The snuffling was coming from a few yards to their right, closer to Holsworth than the cottage. It was a rhythmic sound, not quite like the heavy breathing of farm animals, but not entirely unlike it, either.

  Mouthing a curse, Maud liberated her sword from the saddle. "You should—"

  Katrina was already gone, several paces away and rapidly scuttling farther, tread swift and enviably cat-quiet on the treacherous forest floor. Her manner was so brash and crude that it was easy to forget her aptitude for stealth—a skill only taught to the Order's most promising pupils.

  Maud swore under her breath and veered left, flanking their would-be target.

  Until she saw them, she told herself it could just be a family of wild boars, or a stray dog. Perhaps wolves driven down from the north in search of prey. The gnarled, misshapen bodies and scaled, slimy skin told her otherwise.

  She made out a cluster of half a dozen silhouettes, congregating at the edge of the brush. Some ambled about in the nude while others wore loin cloths around their hips, all elbow-deep in cow entrails, feasting on the slain animals with the appetite of the starving.

  Orcs.

  Maud slid the claymore free of its scabbard. She did not share Katrina's talent for stealth and didn't bother trying to conceal her presence. Several heads came up as steel scraped against leather. They didn't see her, at first; orc eyes weren't as keen in daylight, and Maud's short jacket was, despite to Alais's best efforts, still in such a state of filth as to be nearly indistinguishable from the moss-covered tree bark on either side of her.

  An arrow whistled through the air, puncturing both the element of surprise and one of the orcs as he stood peering about himself in a state of confusion.

  All five of its companions startled, baring bloodied fangs. Two of them sighted Katrina through the trees and let out a garbled warning to their kin. A third, enraged by the interruption, made to leap after her.

  He made it ten feet before Maud swung her sword. The heft of the blade raked across the orc's veined, lustrous back, rending flesh. Dark blood spurted from the deep cut. The orc fell without so much as a shriek of agony.

  Sacrificing cover for the kill made a target of Maud. The remaining orcs lunged for her at the same time.

  They made an impressive sight: four behemoths animated by a base desire to rend and tear human flesh. To consume her, either before or after she stopped twitching.

  Maud planted her feet and took the first one with a sideways swipe, feinting as another made to pummel her with an anvil-sized fist.

  The wood echoed with their animal growls. Katrina's arrows were comparatively silent, cleaving the bracken under the guise of covering fire. Two found their target, but a third went wide, leaving Maud to grapple with an enormous figure hefting a boulder in her direction. She managed to sidestep but lost her footing in the process and narrowly caught herself against the trunk of a gnarled ash.

  Her heart leaped into her throat—not with fear but with excitement. She did not hesitate as she thrust out the claymore and, using the orc's parry, slid the sharpened point into the creature's distended abdomen. Viscera poured out as she yanked out the blade, rounding on another foe before her latest victim struck the ground.

  The frenzy of battle came upon her with the same single-minded energy she sometimes felt in bed with Alais. A similar thrill filled her veins as she hacked and slashed, muscles tensing beneath the heft of her beloved claymore. Not every kill was hers, as the arrows protruding from necks and eye-sockets soon demonstrated, but when she buried her blade into the last of the orcs, the sense of victory was absolute.

  It was frighteningly seductive.

  "Six each," Katrina said, approaching. "Not bad for a morning's work."

  Breathing hard, Maud shook herself. A dozen orcs lay dead in the small clearing, the air pungent with the smell of death and spilled entrails. "Is that all of them?"

  "Unless there's a nest nearby."

  Maud swallowed and surveyed her surroundings. "Unlikely." She would have known if there was. Before she'd left the Order, orcs had been mostly eradicated, nests burned before they could threaten the rural population. Other than the cattle, which lay dismembered and buzzing with flies not a few feet away, Holsworth hadn't lost any small children or farm animals to mysterious circumstances of late.

  As she looked away from the bovine carcasses, something else caught Maud's eye at the edge of the clearing.

  She approached slowly, dread scraping icy fingers down her spine. A collection of flat smooth river stones formed three precariously erected columns. Between them, on a bed of leaves, lay bone fragments and coins spattered with blood.

  "How quaint," Katrina snorted. "A shrine. They were summoned here."

  Maud flexed her hand around the hilt of her sword. Summoned and offered a generous meal to ensure they'd be tempted to remain in the neighbourhood. "Our merchant was a busy lad."

  "Him? I doubt it. You heard Emelyne: h
e was no true mage. And I may lack her gifts, but even I can tell conjuring takes significant practice. Orcs are rare, especially since—"

  "You needn't lecture me about the Order's track record." Bracing a foot against the muddy forest floor, Maud kicked over one of the stone stacks. "Emelyne has been wrong before."

  Katrina seized her arm. "Watch your tongue." Though built tall and slender, she was strong enough to force Maud to face her. "Emelyne knows more about this than you or I. If she says—"

  Tearing free, Maud gave her a none-too-gentle shove. "You listen to me. If there's evil at work in Holsworth, then you two brought it." The alternative didn't bear considering. Everything she'd fled when she left the Order was once again knocking at her door.

  The strength of the shove sent Katrina back a pace. She caught herself, though, smirking. "Since when did you turn craven? You used to bear the truth better than any of us. Now you need help dispatching a handful of orcs…"

  "Call me that again."

  "What's that?" Slowly, nonchalantly, Katrina stripped off her quiver and tossed her bow to the ground. "Craven?"

  Every flicker of rage Maud had suppressed since she'd seen Katrina and Emelyne in her town boiled over. Dropping the claymore, she lunged for Katrina barehanded. Muscle mass worked in her favour. Their bodies collided even as Katrina attempt to feint out of the way, momentum bearing them to the ground in a messy, scrabbling heap.

  Katrina yanked back her right elbow and made to plant a punch. In the split instant before her fist connected, Maud seized her wrist. She arrested that blow but not its sibling, which caught her straight across the jaw. The pain was nowhere near as bad as the disorientation that followed. Maud lost instants, but instants were all it took Katrina to reverse them.

  They fumbled for purchase on each other's clothes, leaves and dirt clinging to their backs, their boots sliding in the soft dirt. A flurry of blows traded with little to show for it left them both winded. Too evenly matched to sneak in another punch, Katrina resorted to dirty tricks. She tried slamming her forehead against Maud's and, when that didn't pan out, did her one better.