Chapter 40
After muttering something in Kell’s ear, whereupon the sturdy orc vanished into the crowd, Tullah got them moving again, with her knife held hidden from any idle glances. They skirted the throng, hugging the side of the main street and heading toward the eastern perimeter of the village.
Quillin walked beside Fern, looking almost as miserable as she felt. She was finding it hard to think ill of the rattkin when she herself had so readily blabbed under threat of pain. Did she expect something more from him?
Fern fervently prayed to all the Eight that Astryx had noticed she’d been gone too long and was alert for trouble.
“I’m so sorry,” muttered Quillin. “I swear, even if I’d known about the goblin back in Turnbuckle, I never would’ve . . . Not that you’ll ever believe me. I understand why you disappeared, though.”
“It doesn’t matter now,” replied Fern in a near whisper. A glance at Tullah revealed that while she could certainly hear their conversation, she didn’t appear to care. The orc strode casually, easily, and didn’t bother to look down at them.
“It does,” insisted Quillin, soft and fierce.
They both fell silent as Kell emerged at the mouth of another alley and motioned them in his direction.
Behind him waited the black-clad stone-fey archer, her bow nowhere in evidence. Kell nodded at Tullah, handing her an axe and Marv a shortblade. They slipped them into their belts to match the mace hanging at his.
After a hushed conference, the archer vanished again.
They attracted a few suspicious glances, but ignored them and moved with greater speed, turning down side streets and charting a circuitous route. Marv and Kell drifted away but stayed in sight, scanning every intersection and roofline.
Fern’s feet were like lumps of lead on the ends of her legs, her breath hollow in her ears. She saw several Gatewardens idling in the crowd, but didn’t dare signal to them.
Any moment now, she thought, I should run. Any moment. Dash away, surprise her. Warn Astryx.
But she never did. Terror, and the presence of the knife a few inches from her face kept her carrying meekly onward.
Then the buildings thinned, replaced with gardens and low stone fences as they passed out of the village, and an unmown field of autumn gold came into view. Vineyards filled the leagues beyond, between them and the sprawl of Amberlin.
Traffic was sparse, with only a few folk heading home from the festivities still in full swing behind them.
Just south of the path, a windmill rose over the dead grass, tattered canvas clinging to its blades.
In front of it, clearly visible from the road, Nigel’s starburst hilt and about a foot of steel stood tall above the rustling seed-heads.
There was no sign of Astryx, Zyll, or the horses. Fern had no idea what was going on, but some intention was plain. She rejoiced inwardly.
“I should be disappointed,” muttered Tullah. “But I’m not, really. I never liked doing things the easy way. Come on, you two.”
She nudged Fern to get her and Quillin moving again, directly toward the longsword in the field. The blades of the windmill creaked mournfully, rocking slightly on their axle.
“My lady, I see them,” bellowed Nigel, startling everyone. Fern felt Tullah twitch and savored a moment of grim satisfaction. In lower tones, but no less commanding, he called, “Approach no further. Set free our companion, and you may go on your way.”
“I don’t think so,” hollered Tullah, not slowing. “Behind the windmill, eh, Oathmaiden? That’s a clever way to set a lookout.” She squinted over her shoulder toward the village. Fern turned to follow her gaze, and at first saw nothing . . . then a black shadow on a rooftop in the lee of a chimney.
The archer.
“Leaves you unarmed, though,” continued Tullah. She quietly ordered Marv, “Go. Grab the sword.”
The red-haired man nodded once and began to jog toward the upright Elder Blade, looking left and right for any sign of an ambush.
Fern held her breath as he closed in, expecting . . . she didn’t know what.
When the moment arrived, she still gasped.
As Marv came within a few strides of Nigel, already stretching out his hand, the grass on the far side stirred.
Silver hair and a single ear breached the golden surface as Astryx pushed herself up and tore into a dead sprint.
She reached the starburst hilt an instant before Marv, grasping it with her left hand and ripping Nigel from the earth in a spray of grass and dirt.
Marv squawked, grabbing for the shortsword at his waist, but the Oathmaiden let her momentum flow into an upward sweep of Nigel’s pommel, clubbing the man in the skull. Temple bloodied, he dropped bonelessly in a heap, disappearing into the grass.
Astryx stooped quickly and seized him by the collar, dragging his unconscious head up beside her hip and laying Nigel across his chest. “The archer. Call her down. If I see her again, Marv here will regret it.”
Fern fully expected an arrow to sprout in Marv’s chest, or for Tullah to laugh and tell her to go ahead. That’s certainly what would have happened in any number of adventure stories she’d read. The henchmen were always expendable.
Instead, Tullah gestured at the archer with a move-it-back motion. The woman melted away from the rooftop.
“So, you’ve got one of mine, and I’ve got one of yours,” said Tullah. “Where’s Zyll?”
“She tends to disappear,” replied Astryx coolly. “Hard to keep track of, to be honest.”
Tullah started pushing them forward again, pulling her axe from her belt. “Now what? I’ve got plenty of patience, and I don’t plan to leave without the little demon.”
“That’s close enough,” said Astryx. “Now we don’t have to shout. But I imagine if we wait much longer, we’re going to draw a crowd.”
The orc stopped and studied her. “I notice you’re using your left hand now.
Something wrong with the right?” She shrugged.
“We both know who won the last time we met, and you look worse off than before. I like my odds. Still, I’ll suggest a trade.
Let Marv be, and hand over the goblin. These two go free.
We head our separate ways. You’re out a bounty, but I guarantee, my need’s greater. What do you say?”
“I’ll happily exchange this one for my friend,” said Astryx. “But as you can see, I don’t have a goblin to barter.”
Astryx wasn’t wrong about drawing a crowd. Already, Fern saw that a few villagers had stopped on the road and were pointing. This wasn’t lost on Tullah, who squeezed the haft of her axe until it creaked.
“I hate a fucking impasse,” she growled. “But they always break, in the end.”
And as though her words were prophetic, at that instant, it did.
“Hey!” cried Kell, pointing with his mace at the stone wall running alongside the field.
Zyll was sprinting across the top with Fern’s red cloak billowing out behind her. Even as Fern caught sight of her, Zyll leapt spread-eagled from the fence and plunged into the grass, which rippled like water with her passage as she made a beeline for Tullah, pigtails flying.
“Finally,” breathed the orc, widening her stance.
Quillin seized Fern’s arm and yanked. She stumbled as he pulled her after him, darting behind Kell, who noticed and began to turn. Tullah registered none of it, focused fully on the approaching goblin, her teeth bared and her axe waiting.
Then everything happened very fast.
Zyll growled in her throat, still barreling toward Tullah.
Quillin drove his shoulder into Kell’s left calf, then bit savagely into the back of his knee. Kell shouted, and Fern sprang aside before he could crush her with his fall. She tripped and landed on her ass, scrabbling through the grass as the man hit the ground, hard.
With a triumphant grin, Tullah sliced her axe down and across in a savage cut to meet the place where Zyll would be—
—and howled in fury as Nigel’s steel met the axeblade and drove it sidelong. She found herself face-to-face with Astryx, whose ghostlight eyes blazed into her own.
Zyll made a sharp left and skittered away from Tullah’s thwarted attack. As she did, the clasp of Fern’s red cloak came undone, and the red fabric billowed up and away from her, snagging on Astryx’s hip and threatening to foul her step.
“Eventually,” growled Tullah, turning her attention fully to the Oathmaiden, “. . . every legend has to end.”
Kell moaned in the grass, one hand clapped to his wounded knee as he tried to rise, flailing with his mace at Quillin, who kicked at his exposed face with every opportunity.
Tullah hacked at Astryx in a frenzied explosion of motion. The elf backed away, wielding Nigel left-handed and barely turning aside the hail of blows.
Then Tullah let her axehead drop and punched Astryx directly in her wounded shoulder with a lightning-fast left cross.
The elf screamed and fell back, staggering unsteadily, tangled in Fern’s cloak.
“I thought so,” muttered the orc.
Astryx grunted with pain as she yanked the cloak from around her leg. She twirled it over her right arm and fist, eyes watering.
“Not much of a shield,” observed Tullah, advancing relentlessly. “Let’s get this over with.”
She raised her axe and brought it down hard, not bothering to look for an opening. Every bone-jarring chop hammered Nigel’s steel lower. Astryx’s left arm quivered. With so much damage accumulated from recent battles, she couldn’t muster the strength or vigor for a counterattack.
The Oathmaiden’s eyes glimmered with the possibility of her own death as her defense was whittled away with each merciless stroke.
Nigel moaned something inarticulate, crying out at every impact.
Then Fern stared at the cloak on Astryx’s arm, and something slotted into place in her mind.
“Astryx!” she cried. “The pocket!”
The Oathmaiden’s face clouded for a moment before her eyes widened in sudden understanding.
Tullah’s next stroke knocked Nigel from the elf’s grasp and skinned along the outside of her upper arm, spitting blood across the dead grass.
Astryx let the impact spin her, bringing her right arm around and driving her cloak-wrapped fist against Tullah’s belly with a meaty slap.
The orc grunted, eyes flying wide.
“Whu—” she choked through a mouthful of blood that stippled Astryx’s face. Her brow creased in slow confusion.
Astryx raised her other hand and placed it open-palmed against the orc’s chest. She pressed gently.
Tullah lurched backward, revealing Breadlee’s bloody Elder steel where it had punctured fabric, armor, and flesh, and driven deep into the orc’s gut.
Sagging to her knees, Tullah let her axe tumble from a nerveless grip and brought the hand dreamily to her belly, then up in front of her face. She marveled at the sticky crimson on her fingers.
Her eyelids flickered as she gazed past her trembling hand and Astryx, who was down on her knees and barely supporting herself with one arm. Zyll stood in the grass beyond, staring back solemnly.
“F-Fucker,” gasped Tullah, and collapsed.