Chapter 35 #3
Penn scrambled, almost tripping over the chains between his ankles. He grabbed a knife from the kitchen table and sawed at Richard’s ropes with desperate, clumsy strokes. After Richard’s right hand came loose, he took the knife and cut the other binds in three slashes.
“OPEN THE DOOR, I SHALL BE MERCIFUL, OH YOU LITTLE—”
“She’ll get out,” Jeya croaked. A livid welt bloomed across her cheek. “The oven ain’t lit. She’ll batter through—”
“Then we do not linger.” Richard ran to the trapdoor—a square of darker wood set into the floor near the cauldron—and kicked it open. Below, ten feet of empty air descended to the unruly garden, where flies still droned over the bloated horse-corpse.
“But where’s the ladder?” Puck asked from Richard’s shoulder.
Richard shoved him through. The boy shrieked and landed on his backside.
A crack fractured the oven door. The other children needed no urging and fell one after the other. By the time it was Richard’s turn, the bolt was beginning to curve. He dropped onto his feet, rolled and straightened by the horse carcass.
“We must run.” He carried Pip, who was still crying, and yanked on Penn’s hand. “Hurry!”
The chicken legs thankfully did not give chase as they fled across the clearing. The children’s shackles slowed the pace considerably, and they’d just reached the clearing’s end when a furious cry ripped through the air.
Richard turned in unison with the children. The cottage was moving, windows opening and closing like blinking eyes, and the chicken legs unfurling to lumber forward. Yelka stood in the open doorway, soot streaking her cheeks.
“Oh, dearie,” she sing-songed loudly. “Oh, my clever, lying dearie. I should like to see you try to outrun me.”
The ground shuddered. Richard staggered, and Pip wailed into his collar. Jeya skidded to a halt with Penn and Puck, her eyes fixed on the hut as it strode closer. Each footfall left a deep pit in the soil.
Yelka’s eyes locked on Richard. “You. I shall pull your arms from their sockets, and your legs from your hips, one by slow one. I shall bottle up your screams in my finest jars and uncork them at supper.”
Another step. The cottage was twenty paces away. Fifteen.
Richard glanced around. The trees were too thin, and the camp too far for the shackled children. There was nowhere to hide, nowhere to—
A hand seized his shoulder and wrenched him back. Richard stumbled, Pip nearly slipping from his grip, and Kaelen was already past him—sword drawn, shoulders set.
“Take them and go.”
“You cannot fight a whole cottage, you fool—”
“I do not have to win.” Kaelen adjusted his stance. “I have only to stall it long enough for you to reach thicker trees.”
“I will not leave you.”
“Will you do as you’re told for once?” Kaelen yelled. “Go!”
Richard dropped Pip to the ground. “Children, run into the trees!”
The triplets ran instead to Richard’s trousers, anchoring him in place despite his repeated shouts at them to run. Jeya planted herself next to Kaelen, her sword held up.
“I ain’t leavin’!” Tears slid down Jeya’s face as she faced down the cottage only three steps away. “I ain’t no coward! I’ll fight to death, I will—”
Kaelen wrested her back as the cottage reared, one chicken leg lifting, talons spread wide, the entire bulk of the hut tipping back.
Yelka shrieked her glee from the doorway, and Richard held his breath as the talons came down upon Kaelen, whose sword—small, far too small against such a large claw—was aimed to slash—
BOOM!
A tower rammed into the cottage’s side.
Richard gawked. Truly, it was a tower. He had no other name for it. A walking tower, easily forty feet of riveted iron and stone, square-shouldered, faceless, with no arms and only two columned legs of bricks that cratered the soil.
The cottage crumpled from the hit. Thatch exploded, and beams cracked. One of the chicken legs sheared off at the knee and pinwheeled away. The other leg buckled under the cottage’s weight, and the whole structure came down in a roaring heap of splinters.
Yelka tumbled out of the wreckage, her shawl flapping and her bun unspooling. Her left arm was broken, dangling, but she raised her right fist at the tower.
“OLD YELKA WILL HAVE HER REVENGE—”
The giant stomped. Yelka’s shriek cut off with a loud squelch. The giant hefted its foot up, and brought it down again, and a third time, and a fourth, and by the fourth, there was no longer anything recognisable in the smear of red and grey and tattered shawl beneath its sole.
Seemingly satisfied, the tower pivoted towards the clearing’s edge. Richard followed its gaze and found Flint standing on a few willow trees away. His right arm was raised high above his head, and between two fingers was a single tarot card that Richard recognised.
The Tower.
The iron giant inclined its head—its conical roof bowing. Then it collapsed into a streak of white light that arced across the clearing and vanished into the card’s face.
Flint tucked the card into his sleeve, his legs seeming ready to buckle.
“Apologies for my tardiness,” Flint drawled. “I was in the middle of drinking milk, you see, and simply had to finish.”