by Frank Tuttle
“Alone? Are you crazy, er, boss?”
“I can move faster and a lot quieter by myself. It’s maybe fifteen miles to Rannit. I can do that on foot in seven hours, even moving slow and keeping the noise down. I can stay off the road. If no one here knows I’m gone, well, I should be perfectly safe.”
I wasn’t convincing anyone. But I reminded myself that as the boss I didn’t need to convince Gertriss. And Lady Werewilk might not like it, but she was biting her lip and being quiet.
“So it’s settled. I’ll sneak out right after breakfast. Dawn is a good time for sneaking. Anybody asks, I’m up in my room, pondering my misspent youth.”
Gertriss opened her mouth. I prepared myself for a tirade, having recognized the slight creasing of her forehead and the way she made her hands into fists from Mama’s similar habits.
At that moment, though, Buttercup let loose a long, plaintive cry from somewhere out in Lady Werewilk’s overgrown lawn.
We all bolted for the door. Artists and staff were already in the hall, on the move, though every one of them stopped well before the doors.
Buttercup’s howl rose up and up, growing louder and clearer with every passing moment. Gertriss brandished her new sword, but I put the blade down with the palm of my hand.
“No need for that, Miss,” I said. My words barely rose above the banshee’s wail. “I don’t think she means us any harm.”
I reached the door. I had my hand on the latch when Buttercup’s cry rose sharply and took on a certain unmistakable urgency.
I opened the door, poked my head just around it.
There was no Moon. The torches on either side of the doors illuminated a semicircle of weeds and cracked flagstones, but only for a weak stone’s throw. Beyond that was shadow and forest and night.
One moment, shadow and forest.
Blink.
The next, shadow and forest and Buttercup, at the edge of the lawn. She was wild-eyed, and her hair swirled around her as though she’d just paused in the midst of a spinning dance step.
Her right hand moved, the motion so fast it was only a blur.
When I could see her hand again, it held a crossbow bolt. A black one, twin to the one I’d pried from my boot.
Blink. Buttercup and bolt were gone.
But from the trees came the sound of horses. Fast cavalry mounts, not any of Lady Werewilk’s plodding mules.
“Stay put.” I pulled Toadsticker from my belt. I expected Gertriss to argue, but she just nodded and took the door. “Douse the lights so you don’t make a good target. Get ready to open the door if I need inside in hurry.”
And then I was on the move.
I wish I could say I glided ghostlike from shadow to shadow. Truth is, I was too full of roast beef to do much more than shuffle and grunt. But I managed to shuffle my way across the Werewilk lawn without being seen or shot.
The crape myrtle in which I’d left the blanket and corn bread was empty. I hid myself beneath it, taking advantage of the weeds and the moonless night. The horses were close, still running at a suicidal gallop through thick forest, and I wondered just what kind of madmen they bore.
Buttercup cried out again, from just inside the trees. I saw a hint of motion, wild hair in the starlight, and then she was gone, but the horses were nearly on top of us.
The first of the horsemen broke from the trees.
I very nearly failed to bite back a curse word.
Black mare. Black saddle. Rider small and slight, swathed in black robes, black hood, black sleeves and gloves and boots. Had there been daylight, I might have glimpsed the black mask he wore, with its careful slit for the eyes.
A sorcerer. Worse, a sorcerer who’d sidestepped the arduous and expensive process of being vetted and named by Rannit’s established sorcerous corps.
Which made him a doubly dangerous man, in that his life was already forfeit by law and the ire of beings like Encorla Hisvin and all the other monsters who had survived the War.
He held a staff. Atop it was a glowing blue globe that hissed and sparked.
Buttercup howled, appeared maybe fifty feet from the horseman, and did that odd little side-step that had been, until then, the very last thing I saw her do before she vanished.
This time, though, she fell.
The sorcerer bore down on her, calling out to his comrades, who were so close to the tree line I could hear the strained breathing of their mounts.
She rose, but the blue light played oddly about her, and she struggled and fell again, as though fighting her way through a briar-patch.
She looked back at me. She wasn’t howling anymore. She was screaming, but it was just a scream, with none of the volume of her eerie howls.
I cussed and charged out of the myrtle tree, Toadsticker held low, my supper weighing me down like a belt made of stones.
I’d never reach the sorcerer in time. I knew that. He’d be able to run Buttercup down half a dozen times before I huffed and puffed half the way to him.
And to make matters suddenly worse, four other black-clad sorcerers burst from the trees. Each carried a glowing staff similar to that of the first. When the light from them all fell over Buttercup, her scream fell to a whimper and she sank to her belly and pulled my plain grey blanket over her and began to cry.
The first sorcerer reached her, pulled to a halt, and kept his staff over her huddled form. He barked something to the others, and they turned their black mounts to face me.
I stopped. I went quiet. I was too far from the Werewilk house to make a run for it and too far from the woods to escape there either.
I was in the middle of a patch of knee-high weeds with a short sword, facing five outlaw sorcerers armed with the kind of nasty that only outlaw sorcerers can offer.
Crickets sang. Horses shuffled. The rogue sorcerers sat and stared. One chuckled and muttered something unintelligible to his fellows.
“I’ll give you boys one chance to surrender,” I said, after a time. “After that, things are going to get ugly.”
One of them barked something, and his blue staff blazed blood red, and he pointed it at me.
I raised Toadsticker. I know I did, because Gertriss saw me do it from the door. I only vaguely remember my arm going up, and what little I do recall makes it feel as if the sword moved on its own, and my hand and arm merely followed.
The sorcerer’s red-globed staff flashed, and the lawn lit up bright as day, and a crack of Heaven’s own thunder picked me up off my feet and threw me back a dozen long strides and dropped me on my ass right in the middle of a razor-thorned wild rose bush.
And as I flew, the lightning fell. It came crackling and flashing, blinding bright. Long burning white arms of it reached down from the sky and plucked the sorcerers from their mounts and took them up and up and up, robes and staves and screams and all.
And then it was over.
The weeds broke out into a dozen small fires. The five black mares scattered, hooves thundering, bridles dragging. A hot wind thick with smoke began to blow.
I tore myself loose from the rosebush. Toadsticker lay at my feet, the blade smoking, the hilt so hot I couldn’t hold it.
I left it there, dodged fires, found Buttercup’s blanket, heaped amid the weeds.
I spoke the name I’d given her, but she didn’t stir. I lifted the blanket.
She was gone.
But from the trees, I hear a cry. Not a scream or a howl, just a wordless proclamation that let me know where to look.
Motion, a flash of dirty white arms, and she was there.
I balled up the blanket and threw it to her. She caught it in the air, and made that diving half step, and she was gone.
The lawn was a few good puffs of wind from being engulfed in hungry flames. I yelled for Gertriss, yelled for help.
I didn’t think we’d need to worry about mere archers when the skies themselves were out plucking sorcerers from their mounts.
Chapter Thirteen
It took the ent
ire household to keep the neglected Werewilk lawn from turning into the flash point of a house-gobbling forest fire.
Everywhere, yelling, cursing people beat at flames with blankets or hauled buckets of water from the three wells or stomped out embers with their feet.
Gertriss had gone to help with the bucket brigade. She’d seen the five wand-wavers taken up into the sky. She claimed the sorcerer-snatching lightning had leapt from Toadsticker’s modest blade. Until I sent her off to haul buckets, she’d eyed me warily, as if she expected me to sprout horns or start tossing around random bolts of lightning at any moment.
The fires were small, but numerous. Years of neglect had made the lawn a tinderbox. Stamp out one tiny inferno, and two more sprang to life in revenge. Within moments, the entire House, with the exception of Singh and Milton, was outside, battling flames in the night.
I was side-by-side with Marlo before I even realized it.
We were both throwing wet blankets over the same patch of burning chokeweed. His face was covered in soot and streaked with sweat and grim beneath it all.
“You’re back,” I stated, when we’d beaten the flames down. I lacked the breath for any more elaborate greeting.
He nodded and tottered. I realized he was on the brink of collapsing from exhaustion.
“Burris?”
“Dead. Didn’t make it five miles. Woods are full of ’em.” He spat. “Saw the lightning, smelled the smoke. What’s happening, Finder?”
“They were out hunting Butter—the banshee. Almost got her and me too. Lightning struck them down first.”
Marlo spat again and muttered an unkind word.
“Lightning. Just happened. To strike.” I think he would have hit me, had he retained the strength.
“I’m telling you what I saw. I can’t explain it either.”
People were shouting all around us. Some for water, some for shovels or blankets, some for help. But Lady Werewilk’s cry of Marlo’s name sounded above them, and erased any fears that Marlo would be lacking a place to sleep once the fires were out.
Lady Werewilk and Gertriss came charging up. Both looked rather singed and sooty. Marlo turned to face them.
“I can’t even go to town without the place catching fire,” he observed.
Lady Werewilk coughed, slapped him and immediately caught him up in a brief fierce hug.
“He needs to get indoors,” I said. I surveyed the lawn. I saw smoke rising here and there, but no flames. “Same goes for everybody else. This is about to turn ugly, Lady. They’ve killed Burris, and I just watched five of them die. Time to get everyone inside and lock the doors.”
“Is that true, Marlo? Burris is dead?”
He nodded, and would have fallen had not all three of us taken hold of him.
My hand, where it gripped him, came away wet. A glance confirmed that it was blood.
“Everyone!” Lady Werewilk had a good voice. People all around turned. “Stop. Go to your homes. Bring whatever food you can carry. Lock your doors behind you, and come to the main house. I want everyone, and I mean everyone, inside, right now. Go!”
People went. Gertriss and I carried Marlo, who remained on his feet but could do little more than shuffle. Singh and Milton met us at the door. Milton stared and drooled. Singh handed me a bowl of clean water and a towel.
“For his wounds,” he explained, before returning to tend the empty-eyed Milton.
I maneuvered Marlo to the couch, sat him down, fumbled with his shirt.
“How many?” I asked.
“Lost count. Lot more’n fifty. They were waiting. Burris got a bolt in his chest before we knew they were there.” Marlo winced as Gertriss loosed the last button and lifted his shirt away from the wound.
It wasn’t fatal. He’d been slashed, long and shallow, right above his left kidney. A doctor would probably have stitched him up. Lacking a doctor, we’d be forced to clean the wound and bind it and hope he didn’t tear it open every time he moved.
“How long ago?”
“Not sure. Seems like hours and hours. I turned Hilly loose, started running. They didn’t even try to be quiet. Didn’t care who saw ’em, who heard ’em. All over the damned woods. Like ants. That hurts.”
“It wouldn’t hurt so much if you’d be still,” said Gertriss. She mopped away dried blood, and while a few beads of new blood weeped from the wound, she managed not to tear it open and cause a fresh round of heavy bleeding.
“It was dark by the time I got back here. I was hiding close to the road. Trying to see if they’d hit the House yet. I heard that banshee howl. Then I heard thunder.” He bit back a yelp of pain. “Ain’t no storms out tonight, Finder. I could see stars when the trees got thin. Where you reckon that lightnin’ came from?”
Gertriss raised an eyebrow. “Maybe you ought to be asking Miss Banshee instead of Mr. Markhat,” she said. “Seems to me she’d be the one to know about magical storms and what-not.”
I pondered that. I honestly hadn’t thought about it. I knew neither myself nor Toadsticker normally commanded the ability to call down fire from the heavens, but what did I know about banshees?
My last sight of Buttercup had been of her hiding beneath a blanket, like a child.
No, I decided, whoever or whatever had struck down the sorcerers outside hadn’t been Buttercup.
Which could mean only one thing. There was another sorcerer in the mix. Someone who didn’t want to see Buttercup captured or killed. I’d gotten lucky, I surmised. Had I run into the black-clad sorcerers alone, I doubted they’d have been consumed by any well-timed lightning.
People began tramping in, coughing and swearing. They bore bags of apples and the like, or bundles of clothes, or both. Marlo tried to start barking out orders, but fell into a fit of coughing.
Gertriss pushed him onto his side. Singh had produced a roll of clean white cloth and a bottle of something dark that stank of sulfur.
Gertriss sniffed at it, wrinkled her nose and poured it liberally over Marlo’s wounded side. Marlo gritted his teeth and bit back a scream.
Lady Werewilk came charging up.
“He’ll live,” I said, before she could ask. “Long wound, but shallow. Didn’t hit the kidney or anything else he can’t live without.”
Marlo issued a choked yet very colorful assessment of my medical skills. Gertriss blanched, but continued to bandage him.
“Everyone is inside,” said Lady Werewilk. She wore a sword. Her black hair was singed, and both her arms sported numerous small burns. Her face was as dirty as everyone else’s.
“We need to talk, Lady. Privately.”
“We do indeed, Mr. Markhat. As soon as everyone is settled.”
I nodded. “Which should be soon. Our friends outside may be mad enough to take a whack at us. And if they are, it’ll be tonight.”
“Even after what happened to their wand-wavers?”
“You saw too?”
“I did.” She looked down at Toadsticker. “It appears to be perfectly ordinary.”
“It’s got a charm against the halfdead, Lady. Nothing else.”
“If you insist, Mr. Markhat. Though I imagine the five sorcerers you just slew would claim other wise.”
I bit back a denial. I hadn’t slain anyone. Magic swords, at least ones that spat lightning, were the stuff of hoary old legends and nothing more. Even during the darkest days of the War, no one tried to charm swords with anything but simple hexes—sorcery is just too damned unpredictable, just as likely to spew fire down your trouser-leg as it is in the face of the enemy.
But from the looks I was drawing, I could tell my reasoned arguments would fall not on deaf ears but downright hostile ones.
I groaned.
“Let’s get one thing straight,” I announced, loud enough for all to hear. “I don’t have some legendary mass-murdering sword. I can’t go skipping out into the woods and come back with a bag of severed heads. If we have to fight, and I hope we don’t, you’d better all fight hard, b
ecause if you’re waiting for me to start some epic supernatural smiting you’ll be waiting a long long time. Got it?”
People scurried away. Gertriss bit her lip and shook her head but kept busy tying Marlo’s bandage around his hairy belly.
“Gertriss, find me when you’re done with him. And you, keep your ass on this couch. We don’t have enough hands to fight off bandits and stop you from bleeding all over the Lady’s good couches.”
Marlo glared, but nodded.
“Lady Werewilk. Let’s go.”
I rose and went stamping off toward the kitchen. Lady Werewilk followed.
“All these old places have secret escape tunnels,” I said, when we were out of earshot of Marlo and Gertriss. “Please tell me yours is no exception.”
She hesitated, and for the first time since we’d met I caught her shaping a lie.
“There’s no time, Lady Werewilk. We may have to use it ten breaths from now. Spill it.”
She paused at the kitchen door.
“I’ll need time first,” she said.
“Time to bolt the door on your secret room, Lady? The room where you keep your black cloak and your magical implements? That room?”
She glared. “Lower your voice.”
“So I was right. You’re my secret sorcerer. You’re one who called down the lightning.”
She shook her head. “All right. Yes. Like my mother and her mother before her, I have some training in the arcane. It’s a House tradition, one that has defended not only Werewilk but Rannit, down through the years. But I tell you this plain, Mr. Markhat. I lack the talent to do to those men what was done to them. I did send a working outside, one that I hoped would help you escape. But the lightning was none of my doing. It came from your sword.”
“Like Hell it did.” I put my hand on the door and pushed. “So show me the trap-door or the secret staircase or whatever it is. It’s in here, isn’t it?”
She followed me inside. “Yes. There are two entrances to the old tunnels. One is beneath the stove. There is a much larger one hidden in the back of a closet in the laundry room.”