Chapter 33
Fern couldn’t see anything to begin with.
Then a bristle of shadow penetrated the margin of torchlight several yards down the road. At first, she thought it looked like nothing so much as an ambulatory shrub.
This impression crumbled in moments.
The dirty gleam of mud-smeared bone, the wink of teeth, the stringy remains of cadaverous flesh—all became clearer as it drew near.
As though a riot of ivy had tunneled upward through a grave and brought along everything it found along the way, greenery choked its battered rib cage, swaying in mossy beards as the greenling staggered in her direction.
Its skull was misshapen, blown out and crowned with a tangle of holly that snaked in and out of its orbits.
The lower jaw bobbed, disconnected, in the ferns choking its collar.
Each footfall was a rustle and clatter as it advanced unerringly toward her.
Fern stared transfixed at this shambling nightmare of creeper and decay. It moved so slowly that her horror and fear hadn’t yet muscled their way to the forefront of her mind. The goat beside her shifted anxiously from hoof to hoof, panting in quick, hard breaths.
A noise behind Fern made her turn to discover three more of the horrible things, and they were much, much closer. Then her fear did find purchase.
“Astryx!” she cried. She forgot all about getting the goat back into the tavern.
The nanny’s thinning patience with her snapped, and it jerked the lead from Fern’s paw, fleeing into the darkness with a bleat of dismay.
The greenlings did not turn to follow it.
“Um,” said Breadlee. “I’m not sure which bit to stab.”
Fern’s temporary paralysis ended, and she began backing away from the lantern, toward the tavern. “Astryx!” she called again, a note of desperation entering her voice. “Where the hells are you?”
Her foot caught in her cloak, and she went down hard on her tail.
The second greenling’s right arm creaked in her direction, twined through with roots.
A profusion of green shoots bristled from half a wolf’s skull, sagging slowly down its humanoid chest. She squawked in horrified alarm, nearly dropping Breadlee as she scrambled to regain her feet to escape.
Even as she did, she heard the door behind her bang open. The shadow of Astryx passed on her left, Nigel’s silver length burning gold in the firelight.
The Oathmaiden whipped him around in a flat arc, crashing into the rib cage of the thing and smashing it sidelong.
A pained grunt of effort escaped the elf’s lips as the greenling folded nearly in half and sank to the ground.
Straight away it began to rise again in eerie defiance of a living beast’s physiology, thrust upward by the greenery that animated it.
Astryx didn’t wait for it to gain its feet, bringing the Elder Blade down in a vicious chop that cleaved it in two halves that at once fought to draw themselves back together.
As she pulled her sword back from the mass of bone and ivy, questing tendrils of green tried to cling to the blade, but skittered quickly away as they touched the steel.
“Get inside!” commanded the elf. “Hurry!”
Fern stared at the door, still yawning open, where Finny stood, slack-jawed. Suddenly, Booth appeared from behind the old woman and yanked her out of view. His eyes met Fern’s for a fleeting instant, a question in his gaze.
When she didn’t move, he heaved the door closed with a rattling bang.
Glancing back at Astryx, Fern saw that the crumpled mess of the greenling was smoking as though Nigel were a hot brand held against it. It did not seem able to rise again as it seethed and bubbled around the Elder Blade.
Two more loomed from the shadows and the Blademistress took a solid step back.
Their advance was slow, but relentless. With a flick, she severed a leg of the leftmost, hooking it away with a swipe so that the limb tumbled off into the darkness.
A snarl of foliage immediately blossomed from its hip, trying to prevent its fall, but Astryx was already slipping her blade between the ribs of its fellow and ripping outward, hurling it away.
She cried out and clapped a hand to her side as Nigel’s point dipped and wavered.
“Steady on, my lady!” Nigel’s voice was thick with helpless distress.
The one-legged greenling lurched toward her again with ungainly, undulating steps, supported by ropes of vines that spidered along beneath it.
“Watch out!” hollered Breadlee. Three more of the creatures staggered around the side of the tavern and directly toward the elf.
Astryx threw a look behind her and put both hands on Nigel’s hilt to steady him, her eyes narrowing with cold resolve.
There are too many, thought Fern, wildly. She’s still too hurt. It takes too long to kill them.
“Shit,” she cried, glancing at the knife in her hand, then at the lantern she’d left behind.
Before she realized what she was doing, she was dashing to scoop the oil lantern up in her empty paw. Without even pausing for a terrified breath, Fern ran toward the group of greenlings and hurled it directly at the one in the middle.
Lantern-glass smashed against its bones and oil sheeted up in a vivid plume of flame that made her flinch back from the heat and light.
The greenling didn’t react in the slightest. They felt no pain, it was clear. But as the vines and plants animating it crisped and curled, it began to stutter, like a puppet whose master had forgotten to twitch the strings from one moment to the next.
Ignoring the burning greenling, Astryx hacked the newly re-grown limb from the creature at her back, taking its other leg with it, then turned to engage the others.
“We need more lanterns!” yelled Breadlee.
“There aren’t any,” said Fern. Then she caught sight of one of the torch poles, half again her height and jammed into the earth along the road.
Dodging around Astryx and skirting the grasping arms of the legless horror nearby, she seized the closest torch pole low on the shaft and heaved upward with all her might.
It didn’t budge an inch.
“Fuck!” Tears of frustration pricked her eyes.
“Ah, shit,” swore Breadlee. Then, in a tone of resigned exasperation, “Use me.”
“What?”
“Use me to cut it, all right?”
“It’s thicker than my arm!”
“Just do it!”
She stared at the knife in her hand, then quashed her doubt and began sawing at the wood while holding the pole above the cut.
Unbelievably, Breadlee’s keen edge slipped deeper into the wood with each stroke, until after only six, Fern used her weight to snap the top of the torch free in a shower of greasy sparks.
Turning back to the battle, she saw Astryx shoving one of the greenlings off Nigel’s blade with a savage kick of her booted foot. Her longsword made an inarticulate sound of triumph.
With a yowl, something plummeted from the roof to crash into a greenling topped with ram’s horns and burdock—
—Zyll, clawing furiously at the creature as she rode it to the ground, before springing away and disappearing into the shadows before it could retaliate.
“Lady!” cried Fern as she ran back with the shortened torch pole awkwardly pinned under one arm.
Astryx half turned, understanding already plain on her face as she stretched out her free hand.
“Sorry,” gasped Fern. Breadlee swore as she flung him to the dirt and used both paws to heave the torch in Astryx’s direction.
The elf snatched it from the air, spun, and planted its burning end into the chest of her nearest assailant.
Fern snatched Breadlee back up, but then could do little but watch in exhausted astonishment as the sweeping arcs of the torch sketched afterimages of fire into her vision.
Astryx dismantled the remaining greenlings, laying waste with fire and Elder steel, until nothing remained but smoking wrecks of bone and stem.
In the stillness that followed, she stood heaving in long breaths, leaning on Nigel for support, bathed in sweat and soot in equal measure.
“Gods-damn,” breathed Breadlee. “We did it!”
Fern was about to suggest that Astryx was too tired to track down some more terrible creature deep in the woods when a haunting loon-call pierced the night, twisted at the last into a rotten, wet, chuckle.
Then the verdigaunt arrived.
Fern shivered with dreadful awe. The thing seemed to grow in stature as it emerged from the darkness with a thundering stride, rising above the smoldering remains of the greenlings like a lord of the Third Hell.
It walked on two legs, and from its split hooves to the tips of its massive rack of antlers, it must have been thirty hands tall.
Swollen eyes the glossy black of tar considered Astryx from the bearded, misshapen face of an elk, teeth bared in broken slabs within a lipless mouth.
Its heavy shoulders dripped dead moss like banners of spiderweb as it moved.
Three keratinous digits the width of shovels curled and uncurled at the ends of powerful arms as it regarded the Oathmaiden with the disdain of a vengeful god.
“Oh no,” breathed Fern, sagging.
“Guess she doesn’t have to find its tree after all,” added Breadlee, his voice grim.
There would be no reprieve, no moment to regroup.
The thing hunched to survey the wreckage of its minions in the road, then twisted its remarkably flexible neck to stare at Astryx.
Fern wondered in a distant way where Zyll was, and if the goblin had anything in her pockets they could use.
Through the glass of the upstairs windows, she could see the spectral impression of faces, watching with mouths agape.
Astryx caught Fern’s eyes even as she brought Nigel up before her, straight and still. “You can’t help here anymore, little squire. You have to run. Now.”
Something lost and tired in her voice bent a piece of Fern entirely out of true.
But she didn’t run. She couldn’t bring herself to abandon her friend.