Claws raking holes deep enough in the now-visible Shade’s chest to disembowel him, Jynx sunk down and bunched his muscles as they flew backwards. In one fluid movement, he sprung off the eviscerated body. Twisting midair, the draven’s teeth snapped closed on the arm of yet another Shade.
Bone snapped. Dropping his blade, the Shade cried out. Jynx released his hold, rolled across the ground, and sprung back to his feet. Even before Jynx was up, the Shade lurched forward like a rag doll. His head split apart with a sickening crack, and he collapsed into a pile.
A hound stepped off the corpse. This time Aeryn was absolutely sure it was a hound. Even if she had not spent months with him, Raker and his graying fur were unmistakable.
Raker growled at Aeryn in what she supposed passed for a greeting, then loped off.
Jynx moved in and stood over Aeryn like a mother protecting her cubs.
“Gee, Rusty, Gee!” boomed Gerald’s voice. “It means ‘right’ you bloody mutt. Mia, haw! Raker has the center covered. The rest of you mongrels work together. You’re a pack, not a bloody bunch of lone wolves. Hedy start loosing your bloody arrows. Take out the soldiers. The dogs will take care of the blasted Shades; they can smell, see and hear them, you can’t do any of those flaming things.”
“But I’ll hit one of our own,” Hedy said.
“Shoot at chest level, boy. None of ours are standing anymore and the dogs ain’t that tall,” Gerald fired back.
It could have been five minutes or five hours later before Gerald’s massive arm scooped Aeryn up. Time seemed to have lost all meaning as she lay their listening to the battle, groaning at the flames seeping from her shoulder and crawling over her body like liquid fire.
“What—“ Aeryn cleared her throat and tasted blood. “What happened?” she croaked.
“Bastards sent the soldiers in then hung back just like Merek’s boy said they would,” Gerald explained. “Only, there were more of them than we had counted on. A few of them tried to get around us right from the get go at the Protector’s Gate. They didn’t know we were waiting for them of course, but if it weren’t for your draven there,” he gave an appreciative nod towards Jynx, who was walking stride for stride with Raker, “we never would have smelled them out. Wouldn’t be standing here ifin that were the case.”
“Neither would we,” Aeryn said sourly. She looked around. “How many made it?”
“A pack on the hunt always sustains losses, Aeryn. It’s the nature of things. The other huntsmen and their dogs are tracking down those that fled to make sure they don’t come out of the woodwork and surprise us later.”
Aeryn noted that Gerald had specifically avoided answering the question. Probably for good reason, too. She could count on two hands the number of men and street urchins she saw moving under their own power. Anyway she looked at it, it was a disaster. They may have taken out the soldiers and Shades, but generals were typically not in the habit of joining their forces at the front lines.
How many Voices did that mean were left, secure in their palace? Too many was the only answer.
Aeryn rolled over and opened her eyes at the sun streaming through the window.
Wait. Sun? Window? A bed beneath her?
She did not even remember closing her eyes, let alone arriving at Merek’s house and crawling into bed.
“. . .where is he now?” Katelyn asked.
Katelyn? What is she doing here?
“He is out helping the porters, drivers and everyone else that had not barricaded the Lord’s Gate so the few soldiers left can’t break through,” Annette said. “Why I bet he could do it all by himself if he had too.”
“Is he really that big?” Katelyn asked.
“Oh yes,” Annette said with a sly grin. “He’s huge. Why he’s so big that—“
“Bloody hell, Annette,” Aeryn cut in. “You better not mean what I think you mean.”
Annette jumped in her seat. The dishes on the table rattled and bounced as her knee struck the underside. She just barely caught the cup before it crashed to the floor.
“Lady Aeryn!” Katelyn exclaimed. The girl was at Aeryn’s side in a moment. “You’re ok.” It was more a statement of fact than a question. “I was worried you weren’t going to wake. You were sleeping like you were dead.”
“I’m surprised I’m not,” Aeryn said. “Now give me a hand and help me out of bed.”
Katelyn came right up to Aeryn’s side and wrapped her small arms about her shoulder to help her sit up. Aeryn yelped in pain and crashed back to the mattress. She had forgotten her shoulder had dislocated earlier. She took a different tactic and started to swing her legs out. That elicited an even louder yelp.
Bloody hell. How could she have forgotten about the knife wound?
“I think I might rather be dead,” Aeryn corrected.
Katelyn frowned. “What else could she have meant?”
“What?” Aeryn asked, confused. Throwing off the covers, she gasped as she saw the thick line of stitches marching down her leg. Only then did she realize her shoulder was braced, and her arms, chest, and sides were crisscrossed in many-layered bandages.
“About Ty being huge—“
“Never mind that,” Aeryn said, cutting the girl off before she could go any further. Though a few more years on the streets and she would have doubtless known enough to shock any dozen nobles and their servants combined. To her credit, Annette had run from the room with all due haste, face crimson red, and had not yet returned. At least the girl was innocent in that one area. “What happened?”
Thankfully, Katelyn took the bait. “About what?”
Aeryn pointedly looked at her bandages.
“Oh, that. That big grizzly man carried you back here after. . .” Katelyn went on, delving into gory details about how Gerald, Hedy, and their score of hounds, helped by another half-dozen huntsmen and their own scores, had shown up and killed the Shades. Apparently Aeryn had passed out not long after Gerald had picked her up, as most of it was news to her. Especially the part about “the fat Lady” organizing everyone that could not hold a weapon into groups to see to the wounded and barricade the Lord’s Gate from the inside.
Katelyn finished and after a moment of silence, Aeryn bluntly asked, “Why are you here?”
“My lady?”
Aeryn sighed. “First of all, I’m not your Lady. Second, I’m not a Lady at all, I’m a street girl like yourself.” She ignored the disbelieving look and plowed on. “Third, all I’ve ever wanted was to live somewhere safe with Jynx and have enough coin to put food in our stomachs.” And if I survive, I intend on seeing that through, Aeryn added silently.
“Jynx?” Katelyn asked.
“Yeah, you know, my draven?” Aeryn said.
Katelyn’s eyes lit up like full moons. “You mean that draven is yours? He’s so deadly and beautiful and sleek and well, deadly.”
“You said that already.” They were getting off topic. “Why are you helping me?”
“Because you, Lady Aeryn,” it appeared Katelyn would not be as easy to convince to drop the honorific as Annette had been, “are the only person that’s ever helped any of us.”
“Us?”
Just as the word left her mouth, the door to the room opened. In came Emeline, who shuffled to Aeryn’s side where she lifted the bandages and inspected the wounds below. A host of others poured after the wrinkled old healer. Annette and Ty, who had evidentially been appropriated to carry Emeline’s healing supplies, Hale, the Big that had wielded the cudgel the size of a wagon axle so effectively, Melanie, a trio of her daughters that were immediately shooed back to work, and Reeve. Aeryn could have done without the chamberlain seeing her like this, but at least he left just as quickly as he had come, muttering something about “finding Lord Merek.”
Embarrassed at lying in bed with so many faces peering down on her, Aeryn gritted her teeth and swung her legs out amid a chorus of protests.
“Child,” Emeline said with a stern gaze, “you’re
lucky to be alive. A hair to the side and that knife would have hit your artery. You would have bled out in seconds.”
“Well, it didn’t, and I didn’t.” Aeryn rose wobbly to her feet. “As for the pain,” she said, preempting the protest that would no doubt come next, “it is nothing a little milk of the poppy cannot handle.” Her leg flexed and almost gave out. Aeryn only stayed on her feet because a dozen hands reached out to support her. “Fine. More than a little. Perhaps a wagonload or two. But I don’t have a choice. I have to finish this. Now.”
By her audience’s reaction, a stranger would have thought she was a petulant child, face covered in pastry sugar, screaming for a new doll five minutes after her mother had just bought her one.
“She’s right,” Gerald said as he walked in. His voice cut through the clamor with ease. All heads swiveled on the spot to appraise the newcomer. Spattered in dirt and blood and streaked in rivulets of sweat from his shaggy hair to an even shaggier beard, he was the very image of a human turned wolf. Or perhaps vice versa. It was hard to tell with the man.
“There are still soldiers on the other side of the gate. They’ll break through or find a way over eventually. We’ve huntsmen and trackers acting as archers, all with hounds at their side, but very few actual swordsmen able to stand and fight. An organized push would wipe us out. That is,” he locked eyes with each person in the room in turn, “unless we send them a message.”
“What message?” Annette squeaked when his eyes met hers.
“That their leaders, all the way to the top of the totem pole, are dead,” Gerald said. “Soldiers won’t fight if their general is dead.”
Aeryn wanted to ask how Gerald knew so much about soldiering—he had fixed what he had seen as glaring flaws in their plans yesterday with nary a word of explanation—but now was not the time. She nodded to him. She was just glad she had his support.
“Count me in,” Ty said. Annette gasped and held on to the thick blacksmith like a life raft.
“Me too,” Katelyn said in her high-pitched voice.
Aeryn shook her head. “No. You’re not coming with.”
“No?” Ty exclaimed. “What do you mean, I’m not coming with? I grew up on the streets same as you. My friends died to those monsters same as yours. I have a right to help.”
“No,” Aeryn said once again.
“But—“ Ty began.
“Boy, you might be able to knock a gate off its hinges with that blacksmith hammer of yours, but whatever Aeryn has in mind, it isn’t going to involve knocking on the front door,” Gerald said. He rounded on Aeryn. “At least, it better not. We wouldn’t last five seconds.”
“Oh and I suppose you are the master of stealth?” Ty asked. “Your beard probably hums when the wind blows. They’ll hear you from a mile away.”
Gerald dropped his head back and laughed. “Why thank you, boy.”
Ty scowled. “And her?” he asked, pointing at Katelyn. “I suppose she gets to help?”
“I have something else in mind for you,” Aeryn said. “You too, Katelyn.”
“Like what?” Ty asked skeptically.
“The Voices’ greatest strength is in their secrecy, right? Hiding in their palace behind walls and gates, ruling unseen from the shadows at the behest of a God that doesn’t exist,” Aeryn said.
“Yeah, so?” Ty asked.
Gerald nodded thoughtfully. The huntsman had to have been a soldier at one point in his life.
“So let’s use that against them,” Aeryn said. She went on and outlined what she had come up with so far. It was not much considering she had only been awake for a few minutes, but it was enough to get the ball rolling.
Gerald curled his lips back in a smile; a smile that looked nothing like it should have. “I like it.”
“You sure you have enough muscle left in those old arms of yours?” Merek asked, entering from the hall, Reeve at his shoulder.
“Old?” Gerald clapped Merek on the back—a little too hard if Merek’s grunt was any indication. “If anything, I’ll be carrying your sorry ass up over my shoulder.”
“But, my lord, you cannot go,” Reeve said. He looked aghast. “You’re injured and should be resting in bed. Besides, your house needs you. If anything were to happen, we would. . .” It was foreign to see Reeve, the crusty chamberlain, choke up with emotion. “We would. . .”
Merek rested a hand on the man’s shoulder. “Reeve, I appreciate your candor, but I’m going. This day has been coming for a long while.” His eyes blossomed into a blaze of red-hot fire. “I intend to avenge those who have fallen.”
“For Isabel and Bethany,” Gerald said.
Merek gave the huntsman a nod. “For Isabel and Bethany. The best wife and daughter I could have asked for. For Asher, my son,” he added. No one batted an eye that he had dropped the “in-law” and “one-time.”
“For Will,” Aeryn said, her lifelong friend.
Ty looked at Aeryn. “For Brin and Bran,” he said.
Not surprisingly, Katelyn and the hulking Big, Hale, added a pair of names each. More surprisingly however, were the list of names added by Melanie, Annette, and Emeline, the latter evidently having lived in Maerilin in her youth before escaping to the countryside.
“For Rickon,” Aeryn whispered silent enough not to carry. Despite having turned his back on her, she held out hope that he had escaped the mayhem and survived.
The silence held for a minute before Aeryn looked up, face, eyes, arms, and every other part of her steeled for what was about to come.
“Let’s get to it,” Aeryn said.
“Everyone out,” Gerald announced, clearing the room with his gaze. “You all have work to do, and we have details to hash out. Oh, and Emeline?” The healer frowned at being swept aside so casually. “We’re going to need milk of the poppy. A lot of it. If I’m going to throw myself back into the furnace, I’m sure as bloody hell not going to be screaming in pain the entire time.”
Aeryn grinned and caught a wink from the huntsman. Emeline did not object, only raised an eyebrow and shuffled off.
Scant hours later, the sun just shy of hitting its peak, Aeryn stepped out of Merek’s front door. From all the herbs, teas, and poultices she had eaten, drank, or worn, she felt remarkably good. Better than good. Invincible.
Actually, that last part probably was not so good. Drinking away the pain of a cut did not heal it, it only made it that much easier for you to forget about it and bleed out or get an infection that required amputation. She would pay for it later.
Soaking in the sun, Aeryn laughed and pushed the thought away. There might not even be a later to pay for it. The thought was singularly liberating.
“What’s so funny?” Ty asked. Muscles straining, he pulled a handcart whose boards strained beneath the load.
“Nothing,” Aeryn said, shaking her head. “I was just thinking that today is a good day to die.”
Gerald grinned put an arm around Aeryn’s shoulder. “Every day you get to fight for your pack is a good day to die,” the grizzled huntsman said.
Merek smiled like an idiot. “I rather think dying for your pack is a good way to fight.”
Gerald put his other arm around Merek. “That too,” he said. “That too.”
Ty looked thoughtful. “I don’t know,” he said. “I never was too worried about dying on the streets.”
“That’s just because you are too big,” Aeryn explained. “No one wants to mess with a street urchin that has nothing to live for and is capable of crushing your skull with a single fist.”
“You got that right,” Katelyn said at the same time as Hale, who had the wooden wagon axle that doubled as a cudgel resting on his shoulder.
“You are all are crazy,” Hedy said. “Seriously. You are bloody, flaming insane. You do realize we’re all going to die, right?”
“Oh relax, boy,” Gerald said. He winked at Merek. “Just think of all the stories you’ll be able to tell if you make it out of this.”
Merek picked up where Gerald left off. “Why, you’ll have men lining up to buy you a round at every tavern.”
“And women hanging off your arms begging you for more,” Gerald finished.
A spark flashed to life in Hedy’s eyes. “Wait, really? What kind of women?”
The lot of them—minus Hedy, of course, who kept asking about all the woman he would have hanging off his arms—laughed and strode towards the Protector’s Gate. For better or worse, a thousand year reign would end today.
23
Strengths and Weaknesses
You know what to do, right?” Aeryn asked.
“You sound just like Master bloody Luggard,” Ty said, readying one end of the thick chain spooled in the handcart. “I’m not some scatterbrained Lord, you know.”
Merek grunted, shifted under the weight of the clay pots strapped to his back, and raised an eyebrow.
“Fine. Lady, whatever,” Ty corrected.
Aeryn chuckled. Ty did not know how lucky he was Mareen had not heard that. “I’m just making sure,” she said.
She turned to Jynx as the draven brushed up against her leg. Jynx had joined her only moments ago from prowling the estate’s grounds for errant Shades.
Split into two groups, the other huntsmen and trackers, their hounds, and the remaining swordsmen fit to fight, were keeping the Lord’s Gate in check as well as hunting out any soldiers that made it over the Lord’s Wall.
Aeryn would have liked to have a few more people with them to watch their backs, but they were going into the Voice’s palace itself. Each and every member of their small group had a very specific role to play. Any swelling of their numbers would make it harder to accomplish their tasks. That unfortunately meant that Jynx had to stay here.
“I know you want to go with, but short of sprouting wings, you have to stay here with Ty,” Aeryn said. She had already extracted a promise from Ty to care for Jynx if she did not return. Just in case. “Besides, I need you to keep Raker in line,” she added solely for the benefit of seeing Gerald’s reaction.
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