Chapter Four Come One, Come All #2
When I looked back, the birke was gone, blended seamlessly back into the grove.
Maude appeared ten seconds later, red in the cheeks and out of breath.
And she wasn’t alone. There was a man with her, aged and wide in the shoulders.
He sported black leathers, an impressive gray beard, and the same charcoal around his eyes as Maude.
He carried two things: a blacksmith’s hammer and a helmet slung under his arm.
“This is Victor, my blacksmith,” Maude said.
The man—Victor—nodded, staring at me as he scratched his cheek with the blunt end of the hammer.
“That,” Maude said, gesturing at the horse, “is Fig.”
Fig was a brown mare, and she was having trouble finding a suitable path through the trees on account of her rotund stature.
When she made her way over, she set to nuzzling my face.
Passionately. When I managed to pull away, I found three loaves of oaten bread, a jar of dried apples, five skins of water, and a haphazardly lidded flagon filled with stew in her saddlebag.
“From the Eichel family,” Maude said.
I peered at the bottom of the bag. “Do you have a spoon? Silver, preferably.”
“I agree,” the gargoyle said, plopping to a seat on the ground. “Let us sit on ceremony. I am, after all, used to a certain level of sophistication.” He searched the dirt beneath his legs. “I seem to have misplaced my napkin.”
Maude snorted. “I’ve seen you eat from a trough, Rory. No need to stand on ceremony. You must be hungry.”
She had me there. I ripped a bite out of the bread and moaned. We ate, Maude and I with such fervor I was beginning to see the merits of a trough, Victor with idle slowness, and the gargoyle not at all. “So.” Crumbs flew from my mouth. “Learn anything?”
“Plenty.” Maude threw her head back, gulping soup. “According to the Eichels, I’m dead. At least that’s what that lot trespassing in my house are telling everyone.”
I scratched my nose. “Thought I was the dead one.”
“Oh, you are. The story goes that sprites destroyed the cathedral, killing the abbess, the Diviners, and the gargoyles. You and I were meant to be there as well—and apparently were crushed by debris.” She huffed out a sigh. “A fine load of horseshit.”
“No offense,” the gargoyle told Fig.
“Dangerous to come back,” Victor said, stuffing a pipe with sharp-smelling shavings. “You’re better off staying dead. Adds the element of surprise.”
“I’ll surprise the king just fine. But I needed to come back.” Maude elbowed him. “Who else is going to make me a new suit of armor?”
Victor knocked a knuckle over the helmet he’d brought. “You’ve plenty of armor already.”
Maude raised her nose at me. “It’s for him.”
“And what do these robust stories say about me?” the gargoyle asked, fingers trilling excitedly in his lap. “What tales of delicious villainy am I said to have committed on the tor?”
“Crushed with the rest of us, I think.” Maude gulped soup. “Didn’t hear anything about you specifically.”
“Me neither,” said Victor.
That seemed to wound him. The gargoyle let out a curt “Hmpf!” then turned his nose up and refused to look at any of us.
“Here’s the real kicker.” Maude wiped food from her face and reached into her satchel.
“A royal invitation, sent to the Eichel family—and likely other nobles of the hamlets.” She pulled out a folded piece of parchment, cleared her throat, and read: “‘You are hereby notified of a pilgrimage, beginning on the third week of autumn. The king and his knighthood shall journey into the hamlets, from Coulson Faire to the Seacht to the Fervent Peaks and the Chiming Wood, concluding in the Cliffs of Bellidine. Each hamlet shall host—’”
There was a rustle in the trees. Leaves, crunching beneath boots. I thought it might be another birke, but then there was a streak of silver—daylight, dancing over armor—and twelve knights came upon us, all bearing swords.
Maude was already on her feet, and to my surprise, so was I. She stuffed the invitation back into her satchel, then ripped the helmet out of Victor’s hands, slamming it over my head, making my ears ring. “Keep it on,” she hissed, reaching for her axe.
Like wolves, the knights moved in a deliberate pack, swift and sure, locking the dais and the dead birke and our party in their circle. “All right, trespassers,” barked one with a purple sash wrapped around his wrist. “Give the horse back, and you can keep your thieving heads.”
“The horse was not stolen, and the house was not trespassed upon, Rothspar.” Maude did not bark like a dog; she did not even raise her axe. The indefatigable assuredness in her voice was defense enough. “By me, at least.”
“No blooming way.” The knight with the purple sash lifted his visor, his eyes as round as a closed fist. “Sprite killer Maude Bauer, back from the dead.”
The gargoyle threw his arms up. “Am I invisible?”
There was a murmur among the knights. The one who’d spoken, Rothspar, the clear leader of the unit, took a step forward. “We had our orders from the king himself. Got the falcon three days ago. It said you were killed. That Petula Hall was now property of the crown.”
Maude’s hand flexed over the handle of her axe.
“He said to strip the hall of goods and offer its finery to the other noble families of the Wood. Tell me,” Rothspar said, “why would he give the order if you are here, alive and well?” His throat worked. “Unless… You’ve not done something to displease him, have you?”
Maude’s lips tightened.
Rothspar turned to me and squinted, attempting to see into the dark slit of my helmet. “Who the hell are you?”
Gazes fell upon me, weighted, probing. “At present?” I slouched forward lazily. “None of your fucking business.”
Rothspar stared at me a long moment, his hand never straying from the hilt of his sword, then turned back to Maude. “I think the best thing would be for you lot to come back with us to the Hall. We’ll send a falcon to the king and get this sorted out.”
“It’s her house,” I snapped.
“I wasn’t speaking to you,” Rothspar bit back. He let out a low laugh. “I know that pompous voice. That shit stance. You, Rodrick Myndacious, will be coming back with us in chains and a gag. Just for the hell of it.”
“Hear, hear,” called a knight, then another, stepping closer, their circle closing around us in a noose.
These knights knew me, then. By name, at least. But while Maude had received deference fringing on fear, I was addressed with sneers and nothing short of resentment. Seemed I hadn’t been popular during my time with the knighthood.
I yawned.
Meanwhile, Maude was locked in a glaring match with Rothspar. “Come on, Maude. We know you’re injured. Bones, broken. Happened in this very place, in fact.” He still had his hilt in a chokehold. “Don’t make this difficult.”
Maude held her ground. “Folk of the Wood will not take kindly to your lot pushing a Bauer out of Petula Hall. Foresters are known for their short tempers and sharp axes, Rothspar.”
“Folk of the Wood aren’t here. It’s just you and us.”
Something shifted in Maude Bauer’s face, and the muscles in my back strained in response.
My posture slackened, my knees bending of their own volition.
In those final seconds of stillness, Maude did not gift the knights her eyes, but dropped them upon the blade of her axe, a terrifying kind of resignation pulling taut around us all. “I’m sorry, Rothspar. I really am.”
The knight stiffened. He nodded at his second. “Bring her.”
Another knight broke the circle, steps unflagging, sword lifting. Maude snapped into focus. Raised her axe before the oncoming knight could reach her.
And took the man’s arm clean off.
Screams cut through the grove, and the knights swarmed, closing in around us. The gargoyle let out an inhuman roar, his unbroken wing unfurling, his fangs flashing. I didn’t know what to do with my hands, my arms, but my feet were already moving, spurred by instinct.
A knight cut me off. I pivoted, denying his sword my shoulder, then popping him on the jaw with a closed fist, which hurt, but also, dear gods, felt good. “Weapon, Maude,” I shouted. “Give me a weapon!”
She couldn’t. She was fighting three knights at once, the clamor of her axe against their swords so loud the trees shook.
Then Victor was there, holding on to Fig, who was whickering—bucking. “Rory!” He tossed something at me with brutal force.
I caught it in one hand. The blacksmith’s hammer. Good enough. I exhaled. Gritted my teeth.
And swung.
The hammer collided with the nearest knight’s breastplate, a resounding bang that shook me to the bone. It shook the knight, too—so violently he fell from his feet, a crater in his chest where the hammer had met its mark, and then I turned. Struck down another knight.
My body knew exactly how to move, how to pivot and dodge, when to take a hit, when to give one. Pith, I was a machine. I dropped a third knight and shouted like an animal in his face.
Next to me, the gargoyle had just taken a bite of a nearby arm, blood on his claws and lips. He shoved the knight and cackled. “Look, Bartholomew,” he said, “he fell funny.”
I should have been mortified—but all I felt was a hot, ravenous fire.
Maude was backed up against the dais, limping and struggling—and still overpowering anyone who came up against her.
One by one they fell to her axe like trees in a forest. But then a knight caught her with a kick to the knee, and Maude fell.
I shouted, the gargoyle cried out, and we burst through the knights at the same time, knocking them down until we lay in a bruising cluster, all of us kicking and thrashing.
Armor clanged, shouts abounded, and the air filled with pale limestone dust from the gargoyle’s broken wing.