Rise of the Ragged Clover

by Paul Durham

  Rye bit her lip and waited. Malydia looked up from the ring for the first time. The vacant glaze in her mismatched eyes turned sharp. Before Rye could explain further, Malydia lurched forward.

  “You promised you would help him!” she hissed. “You let him drown?”

  “No—” Rye said, but Malydia was upon her, clutching Rye’s coat. The force of her weight drove Rye backward and onto the ground, precariously close to the open portal in the floor. The floodwaters in the deepest, darkest dungeon churned below.

  “I knew you couldn’t be trusted,” Malydia growled, and her hands slid to Rye’s throat.

  “Stop,” Rye gasped, and with all of her strength she pushed Malydia off. Rye flipped on top of the older girl, and Malydia’s head dangled back over the lip of the pit.

  Rye’s hand went to her cudgel, her ears hot as embers. All of Malydia’s vile words and past cruelty came back to her. This was the girl who had insulted her family, who had stolen her choker and imprisoned her in Longchance Keep. She’d long desired to give Malydia a well-deserved thumping, and now she could pitch her right back into the dungeon where she belonged.

  Malydia’s face trembled with fear. Rye gritted her teeth, then remembered something more. Malydia’s effort to help her in the library, her bravery as the Night Courier, and Truitt’s unwavering faith in his sister even when it seemed she didn’t deserve it. Rye clenched her jaw and put her hand inside her coat instead.

  When she removed it, she thrust the canvas portrait into Malydia’s hands.

  “This is your time now, Malydia,” she said. “Village Drowning may not make it through the night. But if it does, it will need a leader with a clear head and a good heart. Remember Truitt. And who you really are.”

  Rye eased her weight off of Malydia and scrambled to the side, out of breath. Malydia pushed herself up so she was sitting. She trembled and clutched the tiny picture frame in her hands. She studied the portrait of herself and her brother as infants. And the face of her mother—perhaps for the very first time. Her eyes widened, and the harsh edges went soft. After another moment, they met Rye’s own.

  “I remember, Rye,” she said, her voice now steady. “And I won’t forget again.”

  28

  The Reckoning

  Rye expected that the flood would come by way of an enormous, crashing wave. Or perhaps in a powerful, bursting torrent, as if a hole had been punched in a dam. Instead, what she found when she made it to the village was something less awe inspiring, but even more chilling. A steady current of water crept through the streets and alleyways, like fingers of spilt wine in the cracks of a tavern’s floorboards. But the fingers didn’t stop. They grew thicker and deeper as if filled from a bottomless cask.

  The water carried with it a stream of debris. Small items at first: sticks, branches, loose hay bales. Then larger items: feed troughs, carts, vendors’ stalls toppled by the Bog Noblins. The floating islands of debris soon became mountains, and the climbing piles of wet refuse were joined by bodies—gray skinned and waterlogged, their rust-orange hair floating kelp-like across the surface. The Bog Noblins who had not been caught in the flood now struggled to flee, retreating to higher ground beyond the outskirts of the village.

  Rye looked to the rooftops, where lanterns glowed atop residences. The villagers had indeed heard the warning, but the extensive flooding must have made it impossible for Folly, Quinn, and the link children to retreat to the Keep themselves. The remains of several Wirry Scares drifted past her on the current, but she was relieved to find the bobbing pumpkin heads unoccupied. She took her best guess as to where she might find her friends and made her way to Market Street as the rain finally began to ebb. When the winding cobblestones became impassable under high water, she took to the rooftops herself.

  Rye had just pulled herself atop the butcher’s shop when she spotted a drenched and bedraggled figure desperately pulling fellow villagers to safety. The woman plucked out a young boy clutching a floating oaken bucket. With desperation-fueled strength, she dragged out an elderly villager struggling to tread water. When the woman paused to push her sopping black hair from her face, Rye cried out and ran to meet her.

  “Mama!” she called.

  Abby caught Rye in her arms and held her tight.

  “Riley,” she whispered, pressing Rye’s cold, wet cheek to her own. “Quinn and Folly told me about what’s happened. They’re with Angus now.”

  Rye released her mother. Abby’s crossbow was gone, and her face was tight with unmasked worry.

  “What about Harmless?” Rye asked urgently. “Is he here as well?”

  Abby shook her head. “I don’t know. I suspect he’s not far, but I’ve lost track of him. See if you can find him. Tell him he must abandon the Reckoning. The flood is rising faster than we can keep up with; we need every available hand to help.”

  Rye glanced across the rooftops, where she could see other villagers, and the smaller figures of link children, doing their best to rescue those trapped by the rising water. She moved to go, but Abby put a hand on her shoulder.

  “Riley, be careful,” she said. “But hurry.”

  Rye nodded and tore off as her mother turned back to the villagers’ plight. She leaped across gables and arches. She heard the clamor of frightened voices as families called to one another from windows below, coordinating their own escapes. Rye struggled to make out other familiar voices among them. Eventually the bell tower rose up over her, and, hardly realizing it, she found herself on a steeply pitched roof at its base. She stopped abruptly.

  A man stood at the edge, hands on his hips, eyes on the tower and its rusting whale weather vane high above.

  He turned, and Rye caught her breath. Slinister’s familiar mask stared back at her, its gaping maw black and looming. But this mask wasn’t scaled or leathery—its plated steel flashed with menace. It was a war helmet fit for a Reckoning.

  Rye ran up the pitched shingles, hoping to put as much distance between herself and the Fork-Tongue Charmer as she could. At the peak, she found a heavyset Luck Ugly seated patiently, a thick broadsword across his knees.

  “Burbage?” she called.

  “Riley?” he said in surprise from behind his own mask.

  “Slinister is right behind me. He’s on his way.”

  Burbage’s hook-nosed mask bobbed as he nodded. “Yes, it’s about that time.”

  He rose to his feet and stretched.

  “Where’s Harmless?” she asked.

  He cocked his head to the other side of the roof. “He’s right down there. You should go and wait with him.”

  “Are you coming?”

  “No. It’s my turn to have a run at that slick-tongued shad,” he said, and twirled the enormous sword in his hand. “There’s nowhere left to go.” He pointed the blade overhead, where the bell tower rose above them.

  Rye swallowed hard.

  “Go on,” he said, shooing her. “Scoot.”

  Burbage marched down the roof to where she’d seen Slinister.

  Rye rushed the other way to find Harmless. It wasn’t difficult. He stood pensively at the edge of the neighboring roof below, the High Chieftain’s mask in his hand and his gray eyes staring out at the watery village around them.

  “It’s Slinister,” she said, out of breath. “He’s coming.”

  “Yes, Riley,” Harmless said. Any surprise he had to see her quickly disappeared. He asked for no explanation. “It seems the time of reckoning has come for us all.”

  “You have to abandon the Reckoning,” she pleaded. “Mama is here on the roofs. She sent me to find you. The village is drowning, and she needs your help.”

  Harmless didn’t reply. He cast his eyes up at the bell tower, then to the crowded rooftops below them.

  “Please,” Rye implored. “Is no cost too great for the High Chieftain’s Crest?”

  Harmless’s eyes met her own. He breathed heavily, as if laboring over a great burden. Then he placed a hand on her shoulder.

>   “Come,” he said. “Take me to your mother, and we’ll do whatever we can to help.”

  They took a step up the pitch of the roof, but Harmless’s grip tightened as someone else appeared at its peak. Slinister. Burbage slowed him, but hadn’t stopped him. The Fork-Tongue Charmer paused to catch his breath as lightning bounced from a distant cloud.

  Harmless crouched, hooked his mask on his belt, and put his mouth close to Rye’s ear. “Whatever you see, whatever I may say, stay here. Do not intervene.”

  “But your arm,” Rye said, looking at the wounded limb that clutched his shield. “You’ve been weakened while Slinister remains strong. It’s not fair.”

  “Trust me,” Harmless said. His gray eyes glinted. “Just this one last time. And promise me you’ll stay put.”

  Rye’s stomach fell.

  “Say it,” Harmless said.

  “I promise,” Rye mouthed, in a barely audible whisper.

  He pressed his lips to her head, then grazed her cheek with his palm. For the first time in a long while, his touch warmed her cold, damp skin. He gave Rye a reassuring smile as he turned and left her. She took cover behind one of the stone gargoyles.

  Harmless ascended the pitched roof to its peak, just as Slinister caught sight of him and watched his approach warily. The former comrades and friends regarded each other in silence.

  Slinister glanced up at the bell tower overhead, the electrical storm casting them in its shadow as it lit the sky.

  “So this is where it ends,” Slinister said, his voice muffled and deep behind the hollow of his steel helmet.

  “The High Chieftain’s Crest is yours,” Harmless said. “Join me in assisting the villagers and I’ll concede it to you. All I ask is that we signal the Luck Uglies together, so that they may return from the Western Woods and help us.”

  Rye couldn’t believe her ears. Was Harmless really willing to hand over his Crest—and possibly more—for the sake of the village?

  Slinister seemed similarly dazed. He glanced over his shoulders, as if Harmless’s words were a creeping spider waiting to bite. “Is this a ploy?” he asked. “Some sort of treachery to put me off guard?”

  Harmless shook his head. “It’s no ploy, Slinister. Just an opportunity for us both to right our past wrongs.”

  Slinister was still for a moment. “Your selflessness is admirable, Gray,” he began. “But it is also your greatest weakness. I have long sought the High Chieftain’s Crest, but it is not an honor I wish to barter for. Once I assume it, I won’t be bound by promises to you or anyone else. I’m afraid you have struck your last bargain.”

  Slinister drew a long, serrated blade.

  Wearily, Harmless affixed the High Chieftain’s mask back over his face. His features disappeared behind the jagged scowl of the fearsome veil, and even his eyes were shadowed by its horns and severe ridges. Now, on the rooftops, Rye saw that the mask was the face of a gargoyle.

  “I have neither the time nor the appetite to persuade you,” Harmless said darkly. He reached to his belt, and raised the fearsome war axe in his hand. “So it seems there’s nothing left but to finish what we have started.”

  “Is that supposed to rattle me, Gray?” Slinister asked, gesturing his blade toward Harmless’s weapon. “Send me into a rage by wielding the same axe you used to cleave my skull last time? It didn’t work then, nor will it now.”

  Harmless just crouched, making himself small behind his spiked shield, axe at the ready. Then, faster than Rye could blink, he struck.

  But Slinister was ready and ducked his blow, Harmless’s axe gouging a chimney with a shower of sparks.

  Harmless lurched forward, trying to bash Slinister with his shield, but Slinister stepped away, wary of the sharpened spikes.

  Slinister planted a heel into Harmless’s calf. Rye heard Harmless groan and drop to his knee. Slinister’s boot was fitted with a long spur, and when he pulled it free from Harmless’s leg it was slick from the fresh puncture.

  A quick lash of Slinister’s sword hilt and Harmless was disarmed, his axe tumbling onto the rooftop. Rye caught her breath in her throat as Slinister raised his blade. He brought it down on Harmless, hacking at his shield like a woodcutter. After the first few strikes it was clear that the shield was his target, and he attacked it with such ferocity that he eventually cut away the sharpened spikes until they were little more than dull stumps. Slinister cast his sword aside and ripped the shield from Harmless, flinging it away, leaving Harmless’s bare arm dangling in its sling.

  Slinister lifted his boot and brought it down onto Harmless’s crippled arm. Harmless buckled in pain, twisted, and fell on his stomach. Rye leaped up and was about rush from behind the gargoyle, but her father’s eyes caught her own. They flickered in pain from behind the horned and twisted face of his mask. He gave her the subtlest shake of his head, and she forced herself to wait.

  Slinister stood above him, grabbed him by the shoulders, and tossed him over so that he lay sprawled on his back.

  “How foolish do you think I am?” Slinister growled. “I know you poisoned the spikes of your shield—ten years is a long time, but I’ve seen you do it before. What was it? Asp’s Tongue? Death Bell?”

  “I’ve always preferred midnight sea urchin,” Harmless said through gritted teeth. “Far more effective.”

  Slinister dropped a heavy fist down on Harmless’s face. Rye sucked in her breath at the sound of a crack. The mask. Or Harmless’s bones.

  But Slinister wasn’t done. Another fist. And another. His fury was relentless, and he paused only briefly to shake out his own hands, red and bleeding from the force of his own blows. Rye pinched her eyes tight, the sound sickening her. She couldn’t stand by and wait; it was too much. When she opened her eyes, Slinister had stepped away, bending to retrieve something from the roof. Harmless was deathly still, his feet trembling weakly. His one functioning arm flopped like a blind fish out of water, fingers twitching. The High Chieftain’s mask lay in pieces around his head. She couldn’t bear to look at his face.

  Slinister found what he was looking for. Harmless’s war axe. He clutched it in his bloodied knuckles, and marched back to his fallen victim. Slinister braced a hand on his own knee for support, and raised the axe, like a lumberman measuring a log for splitting.

  “And so it ends,” Slinister said.

  Rye ran out from behind the gargoyle. “No!” she called.

  Slinister’s steel mask jolted in her direction. Rye didn’t know what she expected to accomplish, but the axe trembled in his hand. He moved to raise it again, but it now seemed to be a great weight in his fist. His grip gave way, and the axe fell onto the rooftop. Slinister put a hand on his chest.

  Harmless’s fingertips dug at the roof. Slinister stepped back and thrust his hands to his helmet.

  Rye hurried forward and threw herself on top of Harmless before Slinister could attack again. But Slinister was now desperately unclasping his helmet, clawing it free and throwing it aside. His face was ashen, his eyes blinking wide.

  “Slinister,” Harmless sputtered, through broken lips. “You were wrong.”

  Slinister looked at him, gasping for words between labored breaths.

  Harmless’s fingers had found what they were looking for. It was a broken shard of the High Chieftain’s mask. He raised it as high as he was able.

  “I didn’t poison the shield,” he whispered. “I poisoned the spines of the mask.”

  Slinister’s eyes flared in horror. He pressed his fingers around his own throat as he coughed and heaved, staggering away from Rye and Harmless.

  There was a crack of timbers and shingles. A weak portion of the waterlogged roof gave way, and Slinister Varlet fell through the open hole in a rain of wood, disappearing into the building below.

  29

  Rise of the Ragged Clover

  Rye shivered as the wind picked up, a stray drizzle still sputtering through the air. Harmless had pressed himself up on his elbows and was able to struggle
to his knees. Rye bit back her emotions when she saw his face. The High Chieftain’s mask lay in pieces around him, but he lifted his cowl over his head so that its shadows might shield her from the sight.

  “Are you in terrible pain?” Rye asked.

  “It’s not the worst beating I’ve taken,” he said, with a tiny curl of his swollen lips.

  Rye heard the call of voices far below them. She walked to the edge of the roof and looked down. Folly and Quinn! On a lower rooftop across the waterway that was once Market Street, she could see her friends struggling to pull fellow village children from the floodwater and onto their roof.

  Folly’s voice cried out as a young villager slipped from her arms and slid back into the water. Quinn dove in to save him.

  A renewed sense of urgency gripped Rye’s stomach.

  “They still need help,” Rye said. “The water’s rising fast. I’ll go myself.” She made for the roof’s edge.

  “No,” Harmless called, and pushed himself to his feet. He approached Rye and put a hand on her shoulder. His gray eyes studied her face from their swollen sockets. There was concern in them that he couldn’t mask.

  “You’re cold and exhausted. You’ve already seen and done more tonight than you should have ever had to.”

  “I’m fine,” Rye said, although she could feel her strength wane with every word. She stared down at the villagers struggling below them.

  “I’ll go help Folly and Quinn,” Harmless said. She felt him throw a heavy, oversize cloak over her shoulders. “You stay here and rest a moment. Try to keep warm. I’ll be back shortly to signal the Luck Uglies, then find somewhere dry and safe for you.”

  Pressing his arm to his side, Harmless stepped over the edge and began to descend the building.

  Rye watched him go until he disappeared into the shadows of the village. In the dull predawn glow, she saw the shadows of villagers gathering on the roofs of their homes. Market Street had been rendered a canal, the first-floor shops submerged under ten feet of water. Windows were broken, facades cracked and battered by the Bog Noblins’ assault. But of the Bog Noblins themselves, Rye saw little. The rancid black smoke of the burning buildings had turned white and billowy, the river water quenching the fires’ rage.