Elmwood
He could smell Rollo’s blood and the burn of gunpowder. The walls of the wardrobe were closing in, pressing more tightly around him, threatening to crush him.
In that terrible moment, he could not hold it back any longer. It all came rushing in.
They advanced toward their certain death.
When he woke, there was a ringing loud enough that he wondered stupidly if he was in his box at the opera and a soprano was holding an unspeakably high note.
But no. He was on the ground, lying on his stomach.
The cannons, he thought. He had been knocked down by the power of a nearby blast. Any closer and it would have smashed him to bits.
He tried to move, to crawl forward, but something held him in place.
Storm was on top of him, he realized, crushing him.
He screamed and tried to move, but Storm was deadweight.
Storm was dead.
He had been Elmwood’s constant companion and now he was dead.
That was Elmwood’s fault. All of this was his fault.
He scrabbled against the ground and managed to prop himself up on his elbows, only to come face-to-face with Clark.
Reid Clark was the youngest son of a blacksmith, a winsome, cheerful fellow who liked to sing dirty ballads and who had joined up after having his heart broken.
His wide green eyes were staring blankly into Elmwood’s, his mouth open like he was trying to sing.
A line of blood trickled out of one nostril and down his cheek.
He was dead.
Was everyone dead? Was Elmwood dead?
He tried frantically to drag himself forward, but Storm’s weight pinned him into the earth. He couldn’t feel his legs at all.
Then he saw the Relancian soldier approaching him.
He was just a man in a filthy uniform, every bit as underfed and desperate as Elmwood’s men. He was limping, with blood splattering his legs, and he dragged himself forward using a pike as a crutch. He moved with purpose toward Elmwood.
He was going to stab Elmwood with that pike, and then it would be over.
Up until that point, Elmwood had assumed that when his time came, he would be at peace with it. In life, his Charm had allowed him to steal repeatedly from death, and when the time came to pay, he would settle up honorably and without a fuss.
But surrounded by his dead comrades and enemies, their unseeing eyes staring at him, crushed by his own horse, and possibly mortally wounded, Elmwood was overwhelmed with a great and all-powerful desire to tell death to fuck off one last time.
So he grabbed Clark’s face with his Charmed hands.
It’s just like the woodcocks.
This was the thought that had throbbed through his mind as he tried to keep the madness at bay.
The dead soldiers were like the woodcocks, fluttering obsessively around him, caught in the violent climax of their deaths.
But while the woodcocks had been fleeing when they died, these men had died fighting.
He’d meant to bring back Clark. He’d touched the poor man’s face and asked for life, but he asked too hard. He was too close to death himself and pushed it away too utterly.
Clark shambled to his feet.
Then he resumed doing the last thing he had been doing before he died.
He flung himself at the Relancian with the pike.
The Relancian shrieked and stabbed him, but Clark kept advancing, letting the pike slide through him until he reached the man and fell upon him like some rabid beast. The Relancian tumbled backward to the ground, Clark still pinned to him, and then his screams ceased abruptly.
It was at this point that Elmwood realized Storm was no longer crushing him.
The dead horse staggered to his feet and towered over Elmwood.
A large portion of his belly was missing, his ribs exposed.
He tossed his head, then began to advance.
Propelled by instinct, Elmwood cradled his head and rolled to avoid being crushed underneath his hooves.
As soon as he moved, the pain began. All that existed was the pain in his right hip, and it was so all-consuming that he blacked out again.
He came to on his back, gasping.
All around him, the fighting raged.
It raged because everyone was rising up.
Every dead soldier, no matter which side he’d been aligned with. Every dead horse. Every creature that had been slain upon the battlefield when Elmwood cast his Charm was now rising up.
And they all did what they had been doing when they died. They fought one another relentlessly.
August Branch, who liked to gamble and had once given Elmwood a very pretty set of dice that he’d admired, came to stand over Elmwood.
Branch was dead. His face was blackened from powder blast, and his guts were spilling out of him like ruffles on a red shirt. He fell to his knees in a rush, straddling Elmwood like a lover might, closed his fingers around Elmwood’s throat, and squeezed.
Elmwood flailed, trying to dislodge him, but as soon as he moved, the pain in his hip was so great that he stilled, closing his eyes and praying that it would be over soon.
Then Branch’s fingers went slack, and once again there was a deadweight on top of him.
He opened his eyes and saw that Branch no longer had a head.
A dead Relancian with a sword was shuffling away, having unwittingly saved Elmwood.
Though in truth, it was Branch who ultimately saved him. With the man’s corpse on top of him, he was hidden from the risen soldiers.
They fought one another all around him.
They fought until they fell to pieces.
They fought until Elmwood was buried under a mountain of the dead.
“Elmwood! Elmwood!”
Elmwood realized that the world had gotten quite bright. There was a hand gripping his shoulder. There were other hands pulling at him.
He came to himself in a rush. He was still crouching inside the wardrobe, but the doors were open. Nimsby was outside it, scowling, and Winthrop was saying something—his name.
“Elmwood, please come out of there,” said Winthrop, his voice pleading.
Nimsby reached out and gave Elmwood’s cheek a rough pat.
“He’s back,” said Nimsby.
“Elmwood? Are you with us?” said Winthrop.
Elmwood swallowed. His throat was raw, like he’d been screaming. Maybe he had.
“I’m here,” he managed to croak.
They helped him scoot forward to sit with his feet on the floor. His hands were shaking terribly, and his heart was still pounding.
“Fetch him a drink,” said Nimsby.
“Of course,” said Winthrop. “I’ll be right back.”
He strode off. Nimsby settled onto the wardrobe’s edge next to Elmwood.
“The dog ran off when we were almost to the village,” he said. “I’m sorry.” There was a long pause, then Nimsby spoke again. “I fought in the war, twenty years back. Made my head a right mess.”
“Does it ever improve?” Elmwood asked, too drained to be embarrassed by how desperate he sounded.
Nimsby shrugged. “Most days now, it’s just something that happened to someone who was a lot like me, a long while back.”
Elmwood took a steadying breath. “I find it hard to believe that I will ever forgive myself for the things that I did.”
“No one else can do it for you,” said Nimsby after a while. “It’s not like being a miserable git makes the world any better.”
Winthrop reappeared, carrying a glass of something. It turned out to be ale. Elmwood drained it.
“Where’s Rollo?” he asked, and was surprised by how steady his voice sounded.
Someone had taken Rollo into the nearest chamber, which was Elmwood’s room, and had laid a blanket over him. Winthrop almost protested as Elmwood pulled the blanket back, but then he seemed to think better of it. The three of them stared down at his poor, dead friend.
Elmwood’s heart squeezed painfully, and he braced himself for another onslaught of memory and horror.
But when it came, he realized that he could still breathe.
He could breathe in and out again, and wait for it to move through his body and pass.
He owed that to Rollo. His death was its own little tragedy, and Elmwood would not reduce its importance by making it one more stone to add to his burden.
“I’m so sorry, Elmwood,” said Winthrop. It seemed that this was a new era of his life, where he was to receive all the unsought apologies.
“You owe me no apology, Win. I’m sorry the Harrier hurt you.” He almost said because of me, but he stopped himself. It was not his fault that the Harrier was a murderous brute. It was not his fault.
Then Hilde’s footman appeared in the doorway.
“Ed?” said Elmwood.
“Lady Croft sent me,” he said. “The Harrier is at Croftholde.”
Fear shot through Elmwood’s body.
“Please tell me she fled,” he said. He wasn’t certain that the Harrier would make good on his threat to murder Hilde in cold blood, but it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility. “Tell me she came up with some plan and got away before he arrived.”
Ed shook his head.
“She’s still there. She and Cook are going to knock him out with a sleeping draught to give you time to get away.”
“She’s there with him now?” The fear thickened. A sleeping draught was a madcap scheme from an opera, not a plan!
“Yes. She told me to come and tell you that what you did in Relance has changed things. There’s a truce, and there’s talk of a pardon from the king. The war may even end for good! You should run and buy yourself some time while they sort things out.”
The world tilted a little.
A truce? It seemed quite impossible. Would Hilde lie to get him to flee? No, he didn’t think so. Not after everything that had passed between them.
“How…” he began.
Ed thrust a broadside at him. He scanned it numbly and saw that it was somehow all true. What he had done had been a terrible, selfish mistake—the culmination of a life of terrible and selfish mistakes. Yet…it seemed that some good might come of it.