Chapter 23
It took three seconds for Fern’s brain to register that her understanding of an already bad situation had been woefully wrong, and that it was significantly worse in every respect.
“What’re you waiting for?” cried Breadlee. “That lady with the bow back there is gonna needle you like a pincushion if you just hang around!”
A frantic glance confirmed that the stone-fey did have an arrow nocked, but she hadn’t fully drawn her bow yet. She only watched as the other two advanced, Zyll and Fern their obvious quarry, which was plenty of encouragement for Fern to get a move on.
Bucket moved first, though, and instead, she had to scrabble for a better handhold to keep from tumbling off.
He surged forward, curving wide and then drawing the cart perpendicular to the bridge, blocking most of it and leaving several feet of room on either side before a laughably shallow lip of stone prevented travelers from accidentally stumbling over the edge.
“Thank-ly, Buckley-boy!” cried Zyll, and it dawned on Fern what he’d done.
Bucket had separated the two groups, giving Fern and Zyll something to hide behind.
“Good horse!” she fervently agreed.
They both scrambled to the side of the cart facing Astryx and leapt down to huddle behind the wheel.
Fern heard a peculiar whistling, distinct from the wind, and then the cart rocked as something thumped into the tarpaulin.
An arrow.
Peering around the wheel, she saw the red-haired man and the orc drawing ever nearer, still without any apparent urgency, as the stone-fey fitted another arrow to her bow.
She wasn’t trying to kill them, Fern realized.
She was just keeping them in one place until the others arrived, so that they could kill them.
Fern ducked back behind the wheel, her eyes locking with Zyll’s.
The goblin’s sharp grin was nowhere to be found, and there was something in her eyes that Fern had never seen there before. Shrewdness. Seriousness.
Fear?
Zyll reached out, grasped her paw, and squeezed it once.
“Zu-kenda.”
A buzzing in Fern’s ears ascended into a high whine. She hadn’t been this terrified since her encounter with Varine the Pale, when she’d been absolutely certain she was going to die.
Her blood thumping at her temples, Fern put her back to the wheel and stared ahead, her mind whiting out, dimly aware that Zyll was rummaging in her pockets again.
Which is when she saw Astryx and Tullah.
Fern realized that this battle was nothing at all like the ones she’d witnessed prior.
Because Tullah looked like she was winning.
Astryx moved with the same liquid speed and unerring precision, but where before Nigel had flashed in blinding arcs of white steel, slipping past defenses and shedding parries, now he was deployed to different effect.
Tullah pressed her with brutal strikes, hacking with her axe in fierce and unpredictable chops that rang on Elder steel and flung blue sparks to mix with the flakes of snow, her dozens of braids snapping behind her like coachwhips.
Fern could almost feel the impacts in her own bones, her fingers shivering with sympathetic vibration.
Even as she watched, the orc heaved her weapon around in a diagonal cut that raked down the longblade with a scream of metal, catching between the steel and crosspiece—and then Tullah pushed her right hand all the way up to the axe-head and continued driving through with the left, smashing the haft into Astryx’s sternum with a dull crack.
The Oathmaiden staggered back with a deep grunt, but her blade stayed steady.
“My lady!” cried Nigel.
At his pained voice, Tullah grinned even wider, lips skinning back to bare her tusks entirely. “Always wondered what it’d be like to handle an Elder Blade. Guess I’ll find out.”
She didn’t even look winded.
“This is just when a knife would help!” cried Breadlee from Fern’s paw, sounding near tears.
Astryx reset her feet and lunged forward, Nigel slicing upward in a rising angle, on the offensive for the first time.
Tullah’s grin shifted into something like delight as she hammered the Elder Blade to the side, then looped around it with the axe’s hook to fling the end downward.
“Why does she want to kill you? What did you do?” cried Fern, grabbing Zyll’s collar.
The goblin looked like she might reply, but Tullah beat her to it, every word punctuated by steel on steel as she battered at Astryx’s defenses like the hells’ own woodswoman.
“She. Fucked. My. Life.”
But then Fern could pay no more attention to Tullah or Astryx, because Bucket reared, shifting the cart, just as the red-haired man rounded the end of it with his shortblade up. A peek around the wheel’s rim saw the orc’s boots heading the other way, presumably to the horse’s bridle.
Bucket whinnied angrily and reared again, rocking the cart back. The man with the shortblade put his free hand on it as though to steady it.
Fern saw his eyes widen in disbelief at Zyll, coughing an involuntary laugh.
The goblin stepped away from the cart wheel, brandishing two fistfuls of assorted cutlery.
He took in Breadlee in Fern’s paw. “How ’bout that, Kell? Looks like I’m fine dinin’!”
“Get on with it, Marv,” called the orc, sounding annoyed. “I got the horse.”
Then several things happened almost at once.
A sharp, pained cry from Astryx, although Fern did not see its cause.
Zyll hurled a half-dozen forks and knives at Marv with surprising speed and ferocity. One of the knife blades glanced off his temple, leaving a long gash, and a meat fork embedded itself in his left thigh. His pained oath joined Astryx’s.
And it turned out that Kell the orc did not, in fact, “have the horse.”
“Shit!” he cried, as Bucket swung his head hard to the side and cracked him in the skull with his cheek. Kell staggered away, dropping his maul and clapping both hands to his face.
The horse surged backward, and the cart began to jackknife, clipping Marv, who was just yanking the fork out of his thigh with a shout. He stumbled sideways and went down as the wagon rolled toward the lip of the bridge.
Zyll leapt on him like a rabid weasel tangled in a quilt.
Fern chanced a glance at Astryx and saw her down on one knee, fending off a series of heavy blows from Tullah.
The snow was feathered red around her.
And then the cart shuddered as the rear right wheel jumped the lip of the bridge and went over.
Bucket screamed as the end of the wagon sagged into space.
The tarpaulin came untethered, and boxes and barrels and loose gear tumbled out of the rear.
With the reduced weight, the horse almost brought the wheel up over the lip again with a surge of effort, but his hooves skidded backward on the icy bridge, and the second wheel began to ease out over the abyss.
“Oh, fuck,” whispered Fern.
Marv howled as Zyll clawed at him.
Tullah roared in triumph.
The moment stretched as Fern stared at the wagon in open-mouthed shock.
It teetered on the precipice. She whipped her head back toward Bucket struggling in his traces, foam flecking his cheeks and chest, straining mightily against the dead weight pulling him toward a terminal downward journey.
On the other side of the cart, Kell stooped to retrieve his maul, and in the far distance, the woman with the bow was shouting something.
“Bucket!” Astryx’s cry was anguished. Fern saw her lunge to her feet with her right hand clamped to her opposite side, the left barely deflecting another of Tullah’s attacks with Nigel as she retreated toward the horse.
The buzzing whine in Fern’s ears ceased.
The white receded.
She darted toward Bucket’s head, seized one of the thick bands of leather hitching him to the wagon, and with a sure, swift stroke, slashed it with Breadlee’s glimmering steel.
He parted the leather like shears through silk.
“This is undignified!” the knife protested.
The cart jerked and tipped and now both wheels were over the edge and the wagon slammed down upon its bed, canting perilously, dragging the horse back several more handspans. His hooves left fracturing trails in the ice.
Fern dashed between Bucket’s legs, heedless of the heaving weight of him, and grabbed the strap on the opposite side, slicing it in two effortlessly.
Trace-buckles higher on his chest popped at the rivets with a metallic snap, and the horse staggered free, even as the cart rumbled over the edge and out of sight. Several soundless heartbeats later, a terrific crack resounded as it struck the rocks below.
Free of the weight at last, Bucket wheeled and reared again, his massive hooves lashing out at Kell the orc, who stumbled away with an arm upraised.
Fern backed up, then tripped over Zyll, who still wrestled with Marv amongst twisting serpents of windblown snow.
As Fern rolled onto her knees, red cloak whipping up her back and around her face, she caught a glimpse of Astryx again.
The Oathmaiden parried another strike and howled at Tullah, her voice raw with anguish and rage.
With a mighty stroke, she caught the haft of Tullah’s axe halfway between the orc’s two fists and sheared it in two.
The lower length of her axe handle went spinning off the edge of the bridge, and the orc was left staring with nearly comical surprise at the much-shortened weapon in her right hand.
“Hells yeah!” hollered Breadlee.
Fern heard a feral hiss from Zyll, then a kick from one of Marv’s boots caught Fern in the shoulder and knocked her sidelong, where she almost lost her grip on the knife.
When she recovered, Astryx was sprinting toward them both while trying unsuccessfully to resheathe Nigel and free her hand.
She snarled in frustration and pain and gave up, reversing her grip and tucking him under her arm where blood from her wound immediately spilled over his blade and poured down the fuller.
An arrow clattered off the stone between them but whickered away harmlessly.