Chapter 36
“Hey! Hey, you gotta get up!”
Fern’s consciousness bobbed just above a dark waterline before it sank beneath once more.
A little eternity ensued down in the shadows.
“Kid!”
She unwillingly surfaced again, lost in a forest of whispering green that seemed to heave up and down like the swell of ocean waves.
Something warm and velvety was brushing against one ear and the fur on the back of Fern’s skull, which drew attention to the front of it, where her face throbbed. Hot shock waves of pain pulsed from her snout back through her eyes, which felt squeezed by her cheeks.
“Come on, come on. Hey, hey you, with the tail! Damn, that doesn’t narrow it down. Bucket! Horse! Bite her!”
“Muphet,” mumbled Fern into the dirt, eyelids flickering. “Nuh.”
Her stomach flipped, and she thought she was going to be sick.
Then something nipped her ear, and a bolt of galvanizing lightning pierced the nausea. She yelped, pushing herself up onto her paws.
“Fuckass, ow!”
She was sprawled in the long grass beside the road. Turning her head made the ache inside it spill to the right side of her face, as though her skull was a bottle half full of liquid pain.
Bucket snorted, inches from her snout.
“Wuh.”
“Oh, thank the effing Eight,” said Breadlee, with huge relief. “You gotta get up. She’s gonna be out of sight soon!”
“Who? Wh—” Then Fern remembered Staysha striding toward her.
“Oh, you bitch,” she snarled, staggering to her feet.
Fern was not a vengeful rattkin, but she had never felt more murderous in her life.
“She tried to shoo the horse off, but he came back. Good thing, too, because I don’t think you’re gonna catch her on foot.”
“She hit me with her lute.”
The sky was coming down twilight, and the purples and golds pulsed brighter in time with Fern’s heartbeat. She wobbled, listing to the side and steadying herself against Bucket’s shoulder.
“Yeah, you’re not the only one. She got little Miss Pockets, too. Tied her up, tossed her in the wagon, and off she went.”
Fern remembered the thump and squawk, and then searched back a little further and recalled her own words, shouted at Astryx in the heat of the moment—“hauling Zyll in for a bounty.”
“Oh, no.”
She gingerly probed her face, hissing at the goose-egg rising on her forehead, then did her best to take stock of her surroundings.
Nothing but grass, road, and one anxious horse. If she squinted—which hurt especially fiercely—she thought she could just make out a dust cloud in the distance to the east.
“Where’s Astryx?”
“Dunno. Hasn’t been back since you ran her off.”
“Help!” hollered Fern, loud enough it rasped her throat. “Astryx! Can you hear me?”
The effort made her woozier.
She paused, listening intently, but heard no response besides rustling grass and the distant caw of a raven.
“Breadlee. Say something so I can find you.”
“Would it kill you to use my real name?”
“That’ll do.”
She oriented on his voice and pushed aside the grass until she uncovered him, stooping to pick him up. Another wave of nausea from the motion broke against the shore of her forehead.
“Well, what are we waiting for?” prompted the knife.
Fern studied Bucket, who regarded her expectantly. She was suddenly very glad that Astryx hadn’t removed his saddle. Nigel’s hilt still stuck out from where he was strapped behind it, beside her satchel.
“This is not a good idea,” said Fern, even as she tottered toward the horse and put a hand on his stirrup. Bucket stared back at her, tossing his head as though to urge her up.
She’d never climbed onto him without Astryx’s assistance before, because, well, he was mountainous, and she was a rattkin.
Picking up his trailing reins, she tossed them up and over his neck, gratified that she managed on the first go.
Then, grasping the stirrup again with one hand, she tiptoed and managed to grab the billet strap with the other.
The horsey scent of him filled her nostrils as she stood pressed against his belly.
Taking a deep breath, she leapt upward, scrambling from one handhold to the next, until she was spread-eagled across his side, with one paw on the cantle and the other on Nigel’s haft.
Scrabbling desperately with her right foot, she managed to snag the stirrup with her toes and slide her foot into it, lunging upward until she threw her left leg over the seat.
Facing backward.
She sat there for a moment, swaying with every thump of her headache.
“Well, you’re up,” observed Breadlee.
She managed to wriggle around and face forward without falling off, using her tail for balance, and then stretched to fumble the reins into her paw.
“I’ve never ridden a horse before,” she said.
“Uh, seems to me like you’ve been doing it for days.”
“I mean when I had to get it to do anything. My feet don’t reach the stirrups. Fuck, this was a stupid idea.”
Bucket shook his head, snorted, and began to walk after the distant dust cloud.
“Oh,” said Fern. “Maybe this will work.”
Then he began to trot. Without Astryx’s steadying weight behind her, Fern bobbled in the saddle and felt herself slipping sideways. “Shit!” She grabbed the saddle horn and tried to hook her tail around Nigel’s sheath.
Bucket broke into a canter, and it was all Fern could do not to judder right off the side of him.
Then he was galloping, and she held on for dear life.
Fern had never moved so fast in her life. Not once during their journey had Astryx ever urged Bucket into a flat-out gallop, and the sheer speed of him took her breath away.
He was significantly faster than Persimmon drawing a wagon.
They barreled through one of the streamlets and sheets of snowmelt fountained up from every hoofbeat.
The dust cloud grew closer and closer. Fern’s eyes teared up at the speed of their passage.
After the first floundering moments, she bit the reins between her teeth and used both paws to clutch the leading edge of the saddle beside the horn, her belly thudding up and down, cloak snapping as Bucket thundered toward their quarry. Her head boomed with every impact.
As they neared the wagon, Fern could hear an angry caterwauling from inside it, like a badger in a barrel, and she realized it was Zyll.
Bucket slowed his pace and drew alongside the buckboard until Fern stared over at an open-mouthed Staysha, whose eyes were wide in astonishment. The lute case she’d clobbered Fern with sat beside her. Her face and hands looked lacerated, and one cheek was going purple.
Apparently, Zyll’s dangerous smile wasn’t just for show.
Fern spat the reins out of her mouth and hollered, “Stop your horse, shit-face!”
The Silver Sparrow’s incredulity transmuted into fury.
“You should have stayed put,” she yelled.
“You’re going to break your damn neck. There’s nothing you can do from the back of that horse!
” She snapped Persimmon’s reins for emphasis.
The horse fought to move faster as the wagon jounced dangerously behind her.
Fern stretched forward and pressed her nose against Bucket’s neck, delirious with pain and anger and something like madness. “Run her off the fucking road, Bucket!”
But Bucket was a smart horse.
Ahead of them another streamlet approached, wider than the one they’d just passed. Boggier.
Bucket increased his speed, then angled in front of Persimmon as the ribbon of water drew ever closer. Fern glanced back over her shoulder as Staysha tried to steer her wagon out from behind him, but Bucket matched her move, obscuring her view.
Then he slowed down, and Persimmon had no choice but to do the same.
The bigger horse trotted through the muddy stream in sloshes of earth and water and Persimmon followed, then foundered to a halt as the wagon’s wheels sank into the silty stream bottom.
“Good horse!” cried Fern, as Bucket pranced in a wide curve and returned to stare balefully at Staysha, apoplectic on the buckboard of her wagon, angrily snapping the reins and urging Persimmon forward.
This time, there was nobody to help push.
Persimmon snorted and reared, then strained with all her might, dragging the wagon forward another few feet, until the front right wheel dipped into a hidden hole. The entire wagon canted sideways, and Fern heard a terrific crack as the front axle broke.
Staysha squawked and spilled overboard to splash into the water and mud of the stream. Her lute case tumbled end over end after her until it popped open in the mire with a muffled BONG. Water filled the case around the exposed lute, and it began to sink.
At Fern’s urging, Bucket approached, standing shin deep in the current.
“You’re not going anywhere, now,” she said.
Staysha struggled to her feet, her burgundy doublet and trousers caked in mud, black hair escaping her jeweled clip in a wild tangle. Baring her teeth, she drew the belt knife at her waist.
“We can take her,” whispered Breadlee.
“Um,” said Fern, as her guts filled with ice. “I actually hadn’t thought this far ahead.”
The wagon rocked on its remaining wheels as Zyll battered against its walls like a caged tornado.
Staysha began to forge through the stream toward her and Fern squeaked and scrambled down Bucket’s opposite side, dropping into the water and just managing to maintain her footing. She drew Breadlee and stared at him blankly, then glanced up at the dwarf from under Bucket’s belly.
“Remember when you said you’d never stabbed anybody before? That’s an oversight we can fix now,” said Breadlee cheerfully.
“I don’t want to fix that oversight!”
“Good,” said Staysha, moving to circle the horse. “Because I don’t mind making this my first time. What do you think you’re going to do with a breadknife, anyway?”
“Breadknife?” cried the knife. Then to Fern in a low voice, “Remember the torch? You got this, I know it.”
Fern blinked as the chill water dragged at her cloak and numbed her toes.
Then she dashed forward, underneath Bucket, directly toward the bard.
Staysha’s mouth opened in an O of surprise as she raised her belt knife to defend herself. Fern gave an inarticulate cry and slashed with Breadlee, cleaving the blade of the dwarf’s weapon off neatly above the hilt.
“That’s Bridgewrecker to you!” bellowed Breadlee.
The shard of metal pinwheeled off into the shallows.
“Now you can stab her!” finished the Elder Blade.
But Fern didn’t, staring in frank disbelief as the Silver Sparrow staggered backward, dropping the useless hilt of her knife and casting about for another weapon.
The dwarf moaned when she saw her waterlogged lute but seized it by the neck and came at Fern again, brandishing it dripping over her head like a misshapen axe.
“Now!” shouted Breadlee, and Fern slashed a second time. A sharp, discordant twang erupted from the neck of the lute as the Elder Blade sliced it, too, in twain, leaving Staysha holding half of a ruined instrument and wearing a look of befuddlement.
“You . . . you . . .” stammered the dwarf.
Fern tackled her, and they both went down in the stream.
Her red cloak tangled around them both, sopping and heavy. She lost her hold on Breadlee as Staysha battered at her side with a fist. Suddenly Fern had a mouthful of water and she was choking, then she was above Staysha, staring at the dwarf’s face where it grimaced at her from beneath the surface.
The bard bashed her again in the ribs, and Fern fell to her side.
Their positions reversed again in a smear of light and nausea.
She held her breath and gazed up through silvery ripples at the Sparrow’s distorted face as the woman scrabbled for the bookseller’s neck.
Staysha found purchase and squeezed, bearing down with all her might as Fern tried fruitlessly to pry the fingers away.
Oh fuck, this is where I drown, and Viv is never going to know what happened to me, and Potroast is going to think I forgot him. Neither of them will ever forgive me. And this bitch will probably write a fucking song about it.
Staysha’s face suddenly disappeared, as did the hands around Fern’s neck.
She gasped and inhaled a huge glug of snowmelt.
Then she was yanked from the stream and hauled into the grass, spitting water as somebody pounded her on the back.
She blinked away mud and silt and stared up into Astryx’s face, which instantly broke into an expression of exhausted relief.
“There you are, little squire.”
“Sounds . . . too . . . cute,” mumbled Fern.
“You can’t leave me here,” said Staysha.
The Silver Sparrow sat on the shore with her forearms on her knees, soaked through and muddy, glaring at them all with burning green eyes. Her jeweled hair clip was lost in the stream, along with the remains of her lute.
“We could let Zyll have her way with you, instead,” replied Fern, cleaning mud from Breadlee with a sodden corner of her cloak.
It had taken her several minutes of searching to locate him in the stream, but he’d gurgled helpfully to get her attention until she spied the cold flash of silver through the running water.
“Zu luffa dra gashmo,” hissed Zyll, snapping her teeth. She crouched atop the wrecked wagon, studying Staysha like a raptor eyeing a rodent.
“That would make it hard to sit down,” agreed Fern.
Staysha gave the goblin a sullen and wary frown.
Astryx finished unhitching a miserable Persimmon from her traces and led her carefully over to stake her beside Bucket.
“We’ll take Persimmon,” said Astryx, looming over the bard. “And leave you your things. I’m sure someone will be along. Otherwise, you might have a long walk ahead of you.”
Sneering, the bard retorted, “Go on. But expect everyone to know that Astryx One-Ear stole a poor woman’s horse and left her to die. How’s that sound for an immortal legacy?”
“To be honest,” said Astryx, already turning to leave, “I’ve never paid much attention to that sort of thing. The songs are never very accurate.”
“Plus, you’d have to have a lute,” observed Breadlee.
Fern approached Staysha, dripping and cold. She didn’t so much as twitch the knife in her hand, but still, trepidation crept into the dwarf’s expression at something in Fern’s gaze.
“Hey,” said Fern, “I couldn’t help but overhear you working on your lyrics back before you clobbered me in the face, and I just thought you should know that ‘avenge’ and ‘scavenge’ don’t rhyme, you feculent sack of shitweasels.”
Somebody snorted laughter that was quickly stifled, and Fern saw Astryx’s shoulders shaking slightly as she strode toward the horses.
“I’ll accept that as a stabbing,” said Breadlee. “That’s one! Onward and upward!”