by Logan Jacobs
Great Aunt Mathilda sensed her grandnephews’ hesitation, and she didn’t like it one bit.
“Didn’t you hear me?” she barked. “Or is it that my wishes no longer matter to you? Perhaps you no longer care to be included in my will?”
“Don’t listen to her,” I warned them. “I understand that you want the inheritance, but if you try to fight me, you won’t live to collect it anyway. Five thousand gold coins isn’t worth your lives, is it? Just take your great aunt and go home. She’ll probably forgive you eventually and you’ll still get to enjoy the rest of her wealth once she croaks.”
“On my sister’s grave, I will never forgive you if you fail me now,” Mathilda shrilled as she shook her knobby, veined finger at the pair of brothers. I assumed that the sister she was referring to must be their grandmother. “Never! You will get nothing from me. Not one pinch of gold dust.”
That, unfortunately, settled the matter in the minds of the two men.
“No!” I yelled as they both raised their swords and charged at me. That shout only seemed to embolden them, as if they thought I feared to fight them, rather than that I didn’t want to cut the pathetic creatures down unnecessarily.
They looked like they were going to slash at Theo to get to me, so I quickly leapt off his back and slapped his flank to tell him to get out of the way, which he did.
Then I brandished my sword at waist height in both hands so that it jutted out at a slight upward angle. As the grandnephews approached the range of my blade, I expanded my sword suddenly, so that the blade sprouted through the belly of the younger blond one. As his face contorted with several kinds of shock, the increased weight of the blade caused it to drop further, and drag a ragged line through his torso until it came to a stop on his pelvic bone. I shrank my sword back down immediately to retract it from his body and regain my grip on it, while he thumped into the grass clutching his stomach as bloodied pink organs started to spill out of it. He gaped wordlessly like a fish out of water and blood leaked from the corner of his mouth.
“Manny, no!” the older brother screamed. He looked at me with a reddened face that looked close to tears, yet his teeth were bared. It was probably the most primal moment of his life. I thought he was about to run at me and readied my sword.
Then, he instead veered to his left and ran toward the blonde women.
I had expected the movement, and was already moving toward the man with my sword ready to spear him, but Theo got their first, and fifteen hundred pounds of horse catapulted itself at the unfortunate man’s head.
His skull shattered like a dropped egg striking the floor, and I could actually see his brain matter slosh out. Then Theo landed on the ground atop the corpse and tossed his silky black mane proudly.
“Nooooo,” Mathilda was half screaming, half sobbing. Given that she hadn’t seemed to give her grandnephews any care or consideration while they were alive, I had to assume that most of her distress was on her own behalf.
Katrina yanked the carriage door open, grabbed the old lady’s arm, and yanked her out of it. Mathilda stumbled and fell onto her hands and knees in the grass. At least, I assumed she was on her knees. Her absurd crinoline and layers of petticoats, thankfully, continued to conceal her lower body from view even in that toppled over position.
Then the two sisters climbed into the carriage in the Hodgsons’ place.
“Take us home then please, Mr. Hale,” Janina said to me. Her smile trembled a bit, so I guessed she was shaken by her brush with death but trying not to show it.
“My pleasure,” I said as I prepared to shut the door for them.
“God will curse you all,” screeched Mathilda Hodgson between sobs.
“Oh, shut up, you old hag,” replied my horse.
Mathilda stared up at Theo in disbelief and wailed harder. That was how we left her there.
I closed the carriage door, hopped up in the front seat, and started driving the Hodgsons’ team of carriage horses, while Theo corralled the Elliott sisters’ four mares and ensured that they followed along with us. In this way we rode on until we could no longer hear the screams and curses of the miserable old woman, with her chest full of five thousand gold coins in prize money tucked safely away in what used to be her carriage.
Chapter Twelve
The Hodgsons’ horses turned out to be exceptionally docile and compliant. I concluded that they either didn’t even notice their sudden change in ownership, or they just didn’t give a damn.
“Hello there,” Theo said to them as he trotted alongside them. Sometimes it amused him to talk at other animals without expecting a response, in the same way that it amused certain humans to do so with their pets. “Hello, new friends. Hello, you practically-pony little miniature bastards. Hello, you mute imbeciles, don’t you have anything to say for yourselves?”
The horses did not, as it turned out, have anything to say for themselves.
So far, the twins’ plan seemed to have gone off about as well as we could have hoped, except for the grandnephews’ refusal to surrender. I didn’t feel guilty about killing anyone who attacked me, I just thought it was a waste for any not particularly evil strangers to throw away their lives like that.
Janina and Katrina were certainly pleased with themselves. I couldn’t hear every word over the sounds of the horses and the carriage, but snatches of cheerful voices and bright laughter from inside the carriage drifted to my ears, and a few times even verses of songs. They had airy soprano voices, which clearly lacked the benefit of training, but had a natural prettiness, nonetheless.
After about an hour we stopped, unhitched the Hodgsons’ horses, and hitched the twins’ own horses into their harnesses instead, while redistributing all their luggage over to the Hodgsons’ horses. The Hodgsons’ horses remained meek and cooperative throughout this process, despite Theo jeering at them the entire time. At least they weren’t as badly off as the twins’ mares had been, since their traveling wardrobe was now distributed between four horses instead of just two. Theo also requested to offload some of my gold and potencium to the new team of horses we had acquired, so I did that as well, and with all nine of our equine companions reasonably contented with the new arrangements, we continued on our way until evening started to set in.
We started a campfire. I was in the company of two beautiful women who’d both demonstrated themselves to be more than willing to have sex with me, and I was more than halfway done with the most lucrative single contract of my two-decade-long career, with the hardest part over with, so I couldn’t help but smile a bit when I laid out my bedroll.
“Want any sherry, Kat?” Janina asked her sister with a mischievous smirk as we warmed our hands by the fire.
“You won’t get rid of me again that easily!” Katrina retorted.
“I don’t see why either of you need to go to sleep,” I drawled as I leaned back with my hands behind my head and stared up at the lonely stars that studded the vast universe. I was confident that Janina knew by then about the time I had spent with her sister, and they both seemed to have a lighthearted attitude about the whole affair. So, I didn’t think it was implausible that I might be able to maneuver both of them into bed with me at the same time. “You’re accustomed to sharing everything with each other all your lives, aren’t you?”
“My goodness, Hal, what on earth are you suggesting?” Katrina exclaimed, but she clearly knew full well what I was suggesting.
“What kind of girls do you think we are?” Janina chimed in with a tone of equal delight.
“Lawless ones,” I replied. “Forces of chaos and hedonism.”
“Well, that isn’t a very nice thing to say about a pair of proper ladies, is it now?” Katrina rebuked me as she slid closer on my left side. She lay on her stomach and propped herself up on her forearms and gazed down into my face as I continued to lie on my back and stare up at the sky.
“I consider it a compliment,” I assured her.
“Our father told us to be good gir
ls, he would be so disappointed,” Janina sighed as she crawled closer on my right side. The twins were exchanging conspiratorial glances with each other over me. With their fair hair and wide ocean eyes and bow-shaped lips, the girls really looked like a pair of goddamn angels. If it hadn’t been for that, I don’t think they could have gotten away with half the shit that they did always somehow seem to get away with.
“He’d be turning over in his grave,” Katrina agreed happily.
“You don’t even know whether he’s dead, do you?” I inquired.
“I’d wager that entire chest of gold on it, and even if he isn’t, he might as well be,” Janina replied.
“And your mother?” I didn’t want to ruin the mood with them, I just found myself genuinely curious about the circumstances that had produced these remarkable creatures.
“We were two when he took us from her, I don’t remember anything about her and I wouldn’t recognize her if I saw her,” Janina said.
“She couldn’t protect us,” Katrina added.
“We’re not her daughters, we’re his,” Janina stated grimly.
“You’re lucky you’re twins,” I remarked.
“You mean because we’ll never be alone?” Katrina asked.
“Yes,” I said.
Unless something happened to one of them, which given their decidedly risky life choices, seemed like a distinct possibility, but I didn’t see any reason to mention that. Surely they were aware of it on some level. Although they probably didn’t really believe it, since they still shone with that teenage conviction of personal invincibility. They were a few years past being teenagers now, but I could easily imagine that they might go on feeling invincible well into middle age at least. They just had those kind of dispositions. Cynical about how the world worked, yes, but perpetually optimistic about how their own fates would turn out, and with a gleam of childish innocence that had somehow never been fully extinguished.
“You’re lucky you have Theo,” Katrina remarked.
“I sure am,” I agreed, in a low voice so that my horse, who was grazing a little way off, wouldn’t overhear me. He never seemed to get fat physically, but he certainly had the sort of ego that was highly susceptible to overfeeding. Truth was though that without Theo, I never would have survived to that day, in more ways than one.
“And, you’re lucky that the two of us are twins,” Janina said with a devilish smile.
“And that we’re ‘forces of chaos and hedonism,’” Katrina quoted me.
“And how, exactly, does that concern me?” I decided to play dumb and keep them in this mode a little longer. They were like cats stalking their prey, and I was rather enjoying watching it.
Janina reached down and ran her thumb along my jawline. “Well… ” she began.
Katrina, meanwhile, got up on her knees and placed her hand on my chest and leaned onto me.
Then, one of the horses let out a panicked whinny.
I sprang to my feet and caused Katrina to topple over.
I saw immediately what it was that had caused the horse, I wasn’t sure which one it was, to whinny. There were another five horses rapidly approaching us out of the darkness, and they weren’t alone. They were each carrying riders.
“Get in the carriage,” I instructed the twins as I drew my sword.
“Stay where you are!” barked the foremost of the strange riders. His voice was somewhat familiar, although his face was half obscured by the low brim of his hat. Then the light of the campfire reached him, and I recognized him immediately.
It was Sheriff Cavendish.
The twins were frozen. They stared up at him in shock and dismay while he glowered down at them from horseback.
“I always knew exactly what the two of you were made of,” he hissed. “I never forgot it for a second. And I never took my eyes off you.”
“Mathilda Hodgson reported to you?” Janina asked. “I knew we should have killed her.”
“You did kill her,” the sheriff retorted.
“What? No we didn’t,” Katrina protested. “She was alive--”
“We found her body beside the bodies of both her grandnephews,” Sheriff Cavendish stated. “All three of you are under arrest for a robbery and a triple murder.”
“Ahem, no marks on the old dame, Sir,” one of the four lawmen who flanked him muttered. “Maybe she died of a heart attack? At her age… ”
“The means doesn’t matter,” Sheriff Cavendish barked at him in annoyance. “Place them under arrest. Now.”
“How do you know we had anything to do with these corpses you found, anyway?” Katrina demanded indignantly, in a belated attempt to play innocent.
“Because we found them by following you when you left town this morning,” the sheriff explained dryly. “As soon as I saw you, I knew there’d be trouble. So I instructed the staff at your inn to alert me as soon as you left.”
I laughed suddenly. I couldn’t help it.
“What’s so funny about a triple murder?” Sheriff Cavendish turned the ire of his squinty blue eyes on me.
“Ah, it’s just… well, the innkeeper and his wife hadn’t come downstairs yet, and no one was watching us at breakfast… ” I said to the twins as they stared in bewilderment, “so, you see, it must have been the fellows who carried your luggage down for you who made the report. It was your excessive quantity of gowns and hats that told on us.”
“Indeed, I suppose you could say that,” Sheriff Cavendish replied coldly as the twins cast me identical glares. “But you have nothing but your vile criminal natures to blame for getting you into this situation in the first place. For causing the deaths of three innocents.”
“Actually, according to your account, you could have stopped us if you really wanted to,” I said lightly. “But you didn’t. You let us have a head start. Because your primary concern wasn’t really protecting the Hodgsons, was it? Your primary concern was getting revenge on the Elliotts for having eluded your grasp all those years ago. So, you waited. You believed they were poised to commit a crime, and you intentionally waited to give them the opportunity, so that you would have something to charge them with. A reason to prosecute them. You sacrificed three lives to get that reason. Way I see it, you’re just as guilty, maybe more so.”
His jaw clenched as I spoke. This was a man who truly defined himself by his adherence to what he considered righteous ways. I knew that my accusation stung.
“I knew you were thieves and liars and whores,” Sheriff Cavendish addressed the twins, “but I didn’t realize that you were capable of murder. I expected that you would try to take the chest. I didn’t imagine that you would slay a defenseless old woman to do so.”
“We didn’t kill her,” Katrina repeated stubbornly.
“You can tell that to the jury, back in Sunderly,” Sheriff Cavendish declared sneeringly.
“You know sir,” I said. “I believe you do have sufficient evidence, and even without that, sufficient local influence, that a jury would surely declare against us. I’m about as confident as you are that we would be sentenced to swing from the gallows.”
“So, are you waiving your right to a trial?” he asked suspiciously.
“Well, in a certain sense, I suppose you could say that,” I said. “I am declining to stand trial. I also decline on behalf of my two friends here.”
The sheriff blinked his narrow, piercing blue eyes as he seemed to process what I meant by that. “You can’t refuse to come with us,” he scoffed in disbelief. He looked at the lawmen he’d brought with him under his command, as if to reassure himself that there were, in fact, still four of them, five including himself, as compared to one of me. “You’ll just be cut down here and now. It will be a much messier end if you force our hands that way. And if you stand trial, there is always the chance you might be imprisoned instead, you know. The court of Sunderly is not without mercy.”
I turned to the Elliott twins, who clung together and clasped each other’s hands. Their eyes were ev
en wider than usual and their usually faintly caramel-hued skin was porcelain white.
“It’s your choice,” I told them. “Where would you like to throw your lot in? With me, or with Sunderly’s judicial system?”
“With you,” Katrina answered.
“We too decline to stand trial,” Janina told the sheriff defiantly.
Two of the lawmen had already produced silver handcuffs. Now, the handcuffs just awkwardly dangled from their hands and glinted in the darkness with reflected firelight, as the lawmen awaited instructions from their superior.
“Kill him,” Sheriff Cavendish sighed as if I were a distasteful chore.
“Run,” I told the girls.
Still holding hands they dashed off into the night, not very quickly, and unfortunately as luminous as moths in their pale gowns.
At the same time, the muscled black colossus whose name was Emperor Theodosius the Great cantered over and presented his back for me to leap onto in passing. He was bareback and I had to grab onto his mane in that first instant to secure my seat, but he permitted that on an emergency basis, and I felt that this situation qualified.
I had my sword drawn, and was prepared to do battle with the lawmen from horseback, but for some reason, they didn’t charge me, despite Sheriff Cavendish’s direct command. Instead all four of them cantered toward the fleeing girls. I wondered if maybe they had the same thought as the elder of Mathilda’s grandnephews, which was to use them as hostages and neutralize me without having to fight me at all. Or maybe it was simply that they were cognizant of their boss’ particular, long-standing, and deep-seated grudge against the admittedly chronically criminal twins, and prioritized them as prisoners over me, a stranger whom Cavendish only really cared about in relation to my wayward clients.
As Theo chased after them, they tended to scatter and then reconverge. The trouble was that if we pursued any one of the four, he would lead us away from the rest of the group who would then catch up to the twins while we were distracted. A bow and arrow would have been ideal in this situation, but that wasn’t a weapon that I carried, or was particularly skilled at using.