by J. P. Ashman
‘Not until I know where my men are?’
‘We have them, at the gate. Now come on. We may have to ride if there’s no room to take flight outside the compound, and the enemy is closing.’
‘Could’ve bloody told us,’ Sav said, scowling at the woman pulling Correia up behind her.
Hud didn’t respond, and as if to accentuate her point about the enemy closing, warning shouts came from a watch tower.
‘Did she say goblins?’ Hud looked round to Correia, brow furrowed.
‘Sounded like it.’ Correia looked equally puzzled. ‘Ride on, Captain, there’ll be time to ponder it later.’
Sav made to talk, but jumped when the eagle-headed beast the women sat atop snapped its beak at him.
‘I’ll meet you there,’ Sav said, shaking his head at the mention of goblins and running off towards the main gate. ‘Bloody bird-horse. Stupid creation.’ He ran as fast as he could, passing more inn-folk along the way, their faces a mix of grim determination and fear.
Hooves and talons thudded behind, alongside and away from him as Hud and Correia rode past, over one of the multiple bridges and off to the Altolnan gate, Sav cursing as he followed. ‘Orismarans and now goblins?’ He shuddered at the memories of Beresford.
Fire arrows came in, whooshing overhead and striking roofs, walls and the ground around Sav. He cursed and ran on, head down. Someone screamed from a way behind, followed by more hooves clattering off the stone of the bridge he’d crossed. He turned and saw one of Royce’s Reds approaching at speed. As the knight neared, he slowed and motioned for Sav to climb up. Another wave of fire arrows flew overhead and Sav took the offer, climbing up behind the red-cloaked knight.
When the two of them arrived at the gate, they encountered the rest of Royce’s Reds milling about atop their mounts, shields held above their heads. Correia’s pathfinders, Giles Bratby and Amis de Valmont sat behind them. Gleave looked and sounded more himself, colourfully cursing the continuing pain in his broken and torn leg, despite the barber-surgeon’s ministrations, whereas Fal looked like a husk of a man, leaning against the back of his knight, head to the side, eyes staring up at the smoke-filled patch of otherwise blue sky. Salliss de Pizan, the Sirretan Witchblade, was in the process of climbing up behind a frowning Hud, as Correia made her way over to and climbed up behind another one of the pegasus riding knights. It was clear none of Hud’s men would have Salliss with them, and it was clear Hud had been ordered to do so by Correia. The atmosphere around the three women was tense.
Drums sounded from the woods, on more than one side of the inn.
‘Goblins move well through forests,’ the knight carrying Fal said, turning his mount and searching the tree framed sky beyond the wall. ‘I’m not convinced the pegasi will be able to lift off, not with so many branches overhanging the road and not with extra bodies.’ He looked to Hud, squinting against the bright sky. ‘You might manage it, Captain, on your mount.’
Hud shook her head. ‘Not without the rest of you. We ride together, as always.’
The knight nodded, lips a thin line as his mount snorted, eager to move on. He pulled across and tied his maille aventail, as did some of the other knights.
Sav felt suddenly vulnerable without the maille and plate the knights wore. He looked to the Earl of Bratby, who still wore the blood-spattered white he’d donned for a tragic wedding. A bright target if I ever saw one.
‘You’re leaving?’ Master Stubley came out of a stone building, sword and buckler in his hands, kettle helm on his head. The dull steel of all three items looked strange indeed compared to his outrageous pink and yellow long-coat and mix-matched hose. Cook followed close behind, a windlass crossbow resting across his thick arms, obscuring his apron covered chest. Sav noticed the man locking eyes with Correia, but Cook broke the look soon after.
‘Ride away, now,’ Correia said to Stubley. She leaned from the back of the pegasus, imploring him to do so with her eyes. ‘Bratby’s army won’t make it in time, but if you ride out, all of you, even on foot if you’ve not enough horses or carts, you have a chance of outrunning them and making it to safety should we fly to the army first and send them your way.’ Correia looked across to Giles, who nodded from behind the knight he clung to.
Sav knew Correia well enough to know she wasn’t convinced of that.
Stubley was shaking his head before Correia finished. ‘My place is here, Lady Burr. We will defend our home as you would your own. There are tricks you know nothing of within these waterways and woods. We’ll hold them. Ride… fly,’ he grinned, ‘and send soldiers to aid us. We’ll be here, waiting, I give you my word.’
‘And I mine!’ Cook said, eyes locked on Correia’s once more.
Nodding, Correia offered a tight smile. ‘I’ll hold you both to that,’ she said. Sav couldn’t help but notice the glistening of her eyes; a rare thing, but not of late.
‘We’re going,’ Hud said, rounding her mount towards the gates. ‘And we may need those tricks, in case flight isn’t possible.’
The drums were now accompanied by shrieks and hoots Sav knew to be goblins. Some of which came from beyond the Altolnan gate. On the road?
Inn-folk on the walls shouted warnings and loosed bolts from crossbows. Cook took one last look at Correia before running to the steps that took him up to the ramparts. His curse was audible even to those in the yard as he loosed his bolt at some unseen target.
‘They’re coming around both sides!’ Cook shouted. ‘They’re traversing the waterways and…’ he ducked and several arrows whistled over the wall. A young man in purple and green grunted and fell back, hitting the ground with a thud, dead, a crude arrow jutting from his chest.
‘We’ll not make it to wing,’ Hud said, looking about frantically.
‘And there’s no room out there to manoeuvre,’ Cook shouted down, loading his crossbow with the windlass cranks attached to it, his shoulders rolling with the effort.
‘It’s time,’ Stubley said, a ragged breath leaving his lips. He pulled a polished tuning fork from his gaudy coat and crossed to the nearest waterway, a channel that rushed along the edge of the courtyard. Twanging the tuning fork on a stone wall, he leaned over and placed the fork into the water.
No one heard a thing, bar Errolas it seemed. Sav saw the elf wince, saw his eyes widen as the realisation of what was to come struck him.
‘Errolas?’ Salliss said, noticing his expression.
Everyone turned to Errolas as Stubley withdrew the fork, twanged it off stone and again placed the fork back into the water.
Cook popped up from his crouch and loosed another bolt through the gap in the crenellations. ‘Ha!’ he shouted, before cranking again.
‘Trolls!’ Errolas said, breaths short, head scanning the tree-line above the wall as if it’d reveal the beasts.
‘Silt trolls,’ Stubley confirmed, stowing away his glistening fork. ‘And they should buy you some time. Just…’ He flicked the seriousness of his look between Hud and Correia. ‘…don’t linger on the bridges.’ At a nod, before anyone could respond, Stubley waved his sword in the air and two men rushed forth to throw off the locking bolts of the Altolnan gates. They heaved the gates inward as more crossbow bolts whipped out.
A cacophony of shrieks, howls, grunts and roars met the group, but before any of them dared take the time to think about what they were to do, Hud drove spurs into her hippogriff’s flanks and the beast surged forward, five pegasi struggling to keep up.
Sav turned and saw the inn-folk watch them leave, a line of them coming to stand beside Stubley, weapons drawn, spears lowered. Sav’s heart lurched. ‘Yet again we leave folk behind,’ he whispered against the wind. ‘Fair thee well,’ he said a little louder, still for his own ears. ‘Your ale was grand and your hospitality grander.’ He turned back the way they were charging, him, his knight and their mount acting as the sternguard, alongside Hud, Salliss and the shrieking hippogriff. A racket joined the rest as shod hooves launched into a gallop a
cross the first bridge and beyond, water rushing beneath them more often than not; goblin arrows flicking past, one thumping into a knight’s shield, another glancing off Gleave’s left spaulder to be swept away in the fast-flowing waters.
‘Too many trees,’ Hud shouted, riding down a goblin that dared step out in front of them, a pathetic spear levelled.
A loud splashing and a guttural bellow drew all eyes right as a mud-like monster rushed from beneath a bridge, taking a goblin’s head in its webbed hand and popping it like an egg. Saliva strung between thick incisors as it stretched its maw, shoving the blood-gushing goblin in and swallowing it as a heron would a fish.
More trolls emerged, moving with incredible speed considering their blubber and paunch. Goblins shrieked and broke cover, falling to crossbow bolts from the walls of the inn, the gate of which was being hauled shut as half a dozen of the little green bastards swarmed it. More goblins fell to the hooves and weapons of the fleeing cavalry. It rankled every man, woman and elf that they were fleeing the fight, Sav knew, but seeing the horrific destruction the massing trolls were now reaping on the swarming goblins gave him heart that the inn-folk may survive long enough for Bratby’s reinforcements to arrive.
Crossbow bolts came in from another angle, from the second inn, whose walls had ladders thrown against them, goblins scaling the shifting wooden pieces of siege equipment before they came to rest against stone.
Sav swung his short-sword from the back of the pegasus he clung to with knees and thighs. It wasn’t a clean hit, more the flat of his blade striking a leather-helmed head, but it had the desired effect and the goblin target stumbled and fell before being dragged under a fallen tree by a slimy hand. The goblin’s shriek struck Sav as it disappeared. He shuddered and clung on all the more as the group accelerated onto the road-proper. Towards Altoln and Bratby’s army.
The last thing Sav heard before hunkering down was another guttural roar. His stomach churned from both flight and fear, for the men and women left behind and for Sirreta as a whole. For whether the trolls aided the inn-folk or not, he was sure the goblins were but scouts compared to the force that would come; compared to the force they’d witnessed taking Easson.
Chapter 48 – Deceive the best of us
There had been nowhere to take flight since leaving Twin Inns. Correia and Hud had talked at length about what happened and what was likely happening elsewhere. They’d stopped to camp on the first night in the forest, for Fal needed much rest, as did Gleave, despite his arguments to the contrary. It may have been a risk, with goblins afoot in the territory, but it would have done them no good, they’d agreed – nor their mounts – to ride on through the night.
Much suspicion surrounded the Sirretan witchblade, Salliss, but Correia’s concern lay with Amis de Valmont, who seemed distracted, distant; melancholy to say the least.
‘You can’t take your eyes off him, can you?’ Sav said, as they made a second night’s stop; their final stop before reaching Suttel and the army camped there. It rankled to stop once more, with potential enemies on their trail, but the mounts were weary despite the previous night’s rest, two up as they were, and it wouldn’t do to push them. Everyone knew that.
Correia sighed and looked sidelong at Sav.
‘Well, it’s true,’ Sav said, crouching by Correia, eyes on Amis who sat by the fire Errolas and Salliss had made. ‘He’s a pretty boy, I’ll give him that,’ Sav conceded, turning to watch Correia’s reaction to the words.
‘Give it a rest, Sav,’ she said, weariness flushing her more than anger. There was none of the usual hardness to her tone. She sounded defeated and hearing that in herself, feeling that in herself, made her feel more so.
Sav chewed his bottom lip, but said nothing.
‘Whatever it is you’re thinking, don’t.’ Just don’t.
‘It might be something useful.’
‘It won’t.’
Sav smirked. They shared a companionable silence for a while, watching the others about the camp. Light was fading swiftly, as it did in the great forest. One minute an illuminated green canopy, the next, darkness.
The mounts snickered and snorted before they fell asleep, and then the owls started, where the other birds had given up on the day. Insects came out in number too, the warm air of The Marches at summer giving life to countless scuttling and winged beasties that liked to nip and irritate bared skin. Sav slapped at the back of his neck and cursed. Correia managed a smile at that.
‘I thought the midges up north were bad,’ Sav muttered. ‘Days of this…’ –another slap– ‘…and I’m still not used to the little bastards that swarm this forest.’
Correia let out a choked sob as the words and the high-pitched buzzing about the camp reminded her of the swarm that had… Oh Starks, she thought. You stupid, stupid… brave, brave boy. She wiped her eyes, hoping the poor firelight would hide the reason why.
‘They biting you too, eh?’ Sav asked, mistaking her movements. Correia said nothing, half-listening to the various conversations instead. She took in the faces she could see, orange light playing across them enough to see their sullen expressions, tight smiles and slow nods as questions were asked and small talk was forced.
‘How’s Fal?’ Correia asked, eyes back on Amis despite the question. Sav spent the most time with Fal since Easson. Correia felt guilt for not being able to do the same. She grunted to herself, drawing a frown from Sav. She felt guilt for Fal being taken in the first place.
‘He’s…’ Sav took a deep breath and eyed Correia some more. ‘He’s Fal.’ He shrugged, clearly unsure what else to say. Correia looked at him and he shifted uncomfortably. ‘He’ll pull through, once home. Which is where we’re heading, it seems. Earlier than planned, too.’
Correia did her best to hide the smile that pulled at her mouth. There was no mirth in it, only a knowing of the man by her side that triggered it.
‘I know as much as you, Sav.’
Sav grunted a laugh and there was mirth in that. ‘I’d be disappointed if that were true, you being the King’s Spymaster and all.’ He grinned at her now, firelight glinting off his teeth.
Looking away, back to Amis, Correia offered a shrug of her own, knowing Sav was watching.
‘All’s well, Correia, as long as you know more than us. Well, that’s the way I look at it.’
‘And is Starks well because of what I know?’ The words left Correia’s lips before she could stop them. They were quick, sharp, and she regretted it. She turned to Sav but his smile remained. Sympathetic, but there. It stopped her apology dead. She knew it wasn’t needed and looked around the camp again, taking in the scarlet fur cloaks and surcoats bent to varying tasks. They’re used to this warmth, to be wearing those cloaks all the bloody time, Correia mused, eyes finishing on Hud, who was curled up close to the modest fire, wolf-head atop her own. Sav startled her by answering her rhetorical question, the one she’d wanted to forget as soon as she’d voiced it.
‘We’ve been lucky,’ he said. ‘We could have all ended up alongside Starks.’ Sav placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezed. He stood and moved across camp, back to Fal’s side, who was sleeping amongst a bundle of blankets people had offered him as he’d muttered himself to sleep. He held the blankets like a babe would its comforter.
Amis caught Correia’s eyes. The man was approaching, leaf-litter crunching underfoot. He looked nervous, hands wringing together before him. ‘May I?’ he asked when he came close, motioning to where Sav had been sitting. Correia nodded. Amis sat and stared at the fire. Correia did the same. They sat in silence for a time, listening to the hushed tones of Hud’s men and the occasional grunts and curses from Gleave as he shifted constantly, failing to make himself comfortable because of his leg and various other stitched and patched wounds.
‘They’re a hardy bunch,’ Amis said, eyes leaving the fire to take in the pathfinders.
‘They are indeed.’
‘You risked all to come and find Giles. Your dedication i
s admirable, madame.’
Correia’s shoulders bobbed. ‘Correia, please.’
Amis smiled.
Correia couldn’t help but smile back, although it was short lived as the dull thud and soundless screams of Starks’ explosion came back to her once again, triggered by the quiet or the guilt of her smile, she couldn’t be sure. She knew Gleave would be reliving it too, which was likely where his moments of none-cursing came from. Some things were too painful to curse, too raw to attack with words and grunts and the like. He’ll be adding Starks’ explosive end to Mearson’s now, in his mind, in his dreams. And feeling the guilt for both… as I do, she thought, watching her restless pathfinder. Her friend.
‘I’m sorry for your loss, Correia,’ Amis said, eyes on Fal’s prone form.
‘Starks?’
‘And the rest. Your Orismaran friend and the gnarled one, Gleave.’
Amusement threatened to take Correia’s pain, but she didn’t allow it. ‘They’re hardy, as you say. And Starks…’
‘There’s no need.’ Amis glanced sidelong at her. ‘Such things are best left unspoken, for quite some time.’
Correia nodded at that. ‘And is that the case with Flavell?’
Amis took a deep breath and looked away, cheeks flushing a deeper red in the firelight.
‘You’re embarrassed?’ Correia searched the man’s face. He didn’t respond.
‘How long did you know her?’ Correia’s tone was soft, searching, but not demanding.
‘Too long and not well enough, it seems.’ He glanced at her. ‘But we talked of this, at Twin Inns,’ he said. There was no venom in his tone, only a weariness Correia understood.
‘We talked as a war council, for want of a better term. And you told us of an uneventful trip across Sirreta and of her personality change within the chateau. We never talked of before.’
Amis took in a shuddering breath, nodding slowly. His embarrassment and frustration were obvious, fingers pulling at dried leaves from the ground.