She moved to the door and started down the stairs. She was in the mood for a little resistance. Right, she said to herself. Right.
He was waiting in the little parlour. A tall man in fine but travel-stained clothes stood looking out of the window. He turned when she entered and Brianna felt a thrill of satisfaction at the surprise on his face.
“You are Mistress Brianna Hemlock?” he said, looking her up and down as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.
Brianna nodded, but said nothing.
“And you are the daughter of the farmer Flemish Hemlock and his wife Jessica?”
It was all Brianna could do to stifle a snort. Her mother was about as much a Jessica as she was a Brian. “I am,” she managed. “And who are you?”
The man’s face coloured. It seemed he wasn’t used to being addressed so directly. Which suggested he spent little time in the country.
“I am Simon Fletcher, steward to the Right Honourable Countess Aggrapella Fitzmichael, your liege lord.” He gave a curt nod and assembled a smug expression as if he’d won an argument.
Brianna hid the rush of panic when she heard the name of Chortley’s sister. “And what brings you here?”
“Two things,” Fletcher said, turning back to the window in a show of confidence. “We have reason to believe that you sheltered the traitor Chortley ul-Fitzmichael. As I’m sure you know, this is a capital offence.”
“Chortley was not accused when he was under this roof. He left when he learned of this allegation so as not to endanger us. It was a noble thing to do,” she said, barely believing the words as she said them.
Fletcher turned back towards her, his deep brown eyes sparkling. “He is a traitor and all that abet him will share his fate! But, no matter, I can see he is not here,” he said, his mood appearing to turn on a tuppence. “Now to the second matter. Where is your mother?”
Brianna shrugged. “I have no idea, I haven’t been paying much attention lately.”
“You expect me to believe you’ve been left in charge of the farm and your parents haven’t told you where they’re going?”
“Believe what you like, I frankly don’t give a toss,” Brianna responded, feeling the familiar comforting anger rising. “They could have gone into Bottom, or they might be visiting a local farm. For all I know, they’re off at the Crapplecreek market.”
Fletcher gave an almost undetectable wave out of the window. “Well, it matters little. You see, Miss Hemlock, the new and glorious regime of the Countess Aggrapella does not suffer witches to be at liberty. Your mother, I understand, is possessed of considerable powers, and would be difficult for a poor steward to tackle. But if I had her daughter in custody, perhaps she would see things differently.”
From his belt, Fletcher drew a knife, but Brianna was already in motion. She pulled her own dagger and leapt at the man, forcing his loaded hand away. He threw her off with surprising strength and pulled himself upright as the door flew open to reveal two large shapes looming in the light from the hallway. With a clang, one of the shapes crumpled as Sally the dairymaid’s curses filled the air.
Brianna flew to her feet and ran across the small parlour. She jumped on the back of the second man, pulling him away from Sally as the old girl lifted the milk churn as if it was a loaf of bread and brought it down on the oaf’s head.
Spinning round, Brianna was just in time to see the heels of Fletcher’s deerskin boots disappearing out of the window. “Well done, Sally,” she said.”
“Nobody messes with an ‘emlock while I’m on the farm,” the old girl responded between pants.
Brianna looked down at the large forms occupying almost the entire hallway. “You get some rope and we’ll tie them up. Then, I’ll go and find mother. This is bad, really bad.”
Chapter 8
BILL, IT SEEMED, WAS NOW regarded as something of a hero by the draconi who had enjoyed rather a snug night warmed by the rocks he’d heated. Dawn had revealed a grey, arid landscape which hardly brightened as the sun rose into a colourless sky. Stingzlikeabee had woken him as soon as she judged he’d be able to see and navigate their surroundings, her only concession to breakfast being a dry wafer or two from her pack.
“Tasty,” Bill said as he swallowed the second wafer, washing it down with a swig of water from the elf’s canteen.
“You are lucky indeed, for we offer our waybread to few warmblooders. It is nourishing and will keep you on your feet for a long day’s march.”
Bill decided he didn’t, on balance, want to know what the biscuits were made of15. “Where are we headed?”
“You must follow me, careful,” she responded. “If we get caught by goblins, none of us will ever see our homes again.”
“Can’t the draconi handle a few goblins?”
The elf nodded. “Yes, but they can’t handle many goblins, and here we are as likely to meet an army as a scout. Now, let us move out.”
Bill went to follow her, but felt his heels lift off the ground. After steadying himself, he looked down to see a face peering out from beneath his feet. “We carry you, warmer of rocks.”
“It’s okay,” Bill said as he tried, without success, to put his foot down on solid ground. Each time a small gaggle would appear beneath him and take his weight like the world’s best spring heel. “I can walk.”
The face reappeared. “But we can carry you quicker, and we wantsss to crosss the cold places and gets back to home where all rocks are warm.”
Bill relented and allowed himself to be lifted a couple of inches from the ground. It was an odd sensation, floating along like that, first going up a steep incline and then down again as they breached a mountain pass. If he’d lived in a dimension that contained the London Underground, he’d have said it reminded him of hurrying down an escalator to catch a tube - without feeling the compulsion to shove people out of the way and without the smell.
In fact, the attitude of the draconi to him had changed completely. Every now and again, a little face would appear from beneath one of his boots to ask if he was comfortable and enjoying the ride. And he was, although the strain of keeping himself balanced was making his legs and arse ache and he was grateful when they came to a halt several hours later.
Stingzlikeabee hadn’t spoken to him all morning. If she’d been a human, Bill would have imagined she was jealous of his newfound relationship with the draconi. It was odd, but he’d not imagined her to lack elf esteem. She slouched off into the rear of the cave she’d found, holding up the pendant which gave off a faint glow as she inspected the rock face.
“It is here,” she said, waving her hand over an unremarkable section of wall, “now we rest.”
“And then what?” Bill asked.
The elf continued to gaze at the wall. “Then we go home.”
“What about me?”
Now she turned to him, her eyes glinting in the gloom. “If you fix what is broken in our world, then you get to go home too.”
Bill settled against the wall of the cave, staring into the darkness and thinking of home. Something brushed against his leg and he looked down into the tiny face of a lizard.
“Do not worry, boss,” it said, “you can fix it. You are the heater of stones.”
Bill squinted. “It’s Sebaceous, isn’t it?”
The lizard’s teeth flashed. “Yes, boss. But I is surprised you remembers.”
“Why is that?”
“I was always told, from when I was a hatchling. To warm bloods we all look the same. Just draconi, just lizards. But you are the warmer of rocks, you are not like others.”
Although his first instinct was to be honest, on this occasion Bill decided not to reveal that he’d recognised Sebaceous because of the ridiculous red bowler hat he wore, at a jaunty angle, and not his facial features. He made a note to pay more attention. It was an odd thing. He had just thought of them as simply lizards16, rather than as a group of individuals. If they’d been an army of six foot humans, he was certain he’d
have made the effort to identify them: the ring-leaders at least. And yet these tiny reptiles each had, it seemed, the strength of a full-grown human. Perhaps they deserved the same respect.
“Ah, do not worry,” broke in Sebaceous, “you will face the walking boxes and triumph, and then you will go home. You are, after all, the heater of igneous minerals.”
Bill glanced down at the lizard, who was smiling and shrugging like someone who has given three punchlines and is hoping his audience will finally understand the joke. He put his hand down on a moderately sized boulder, shut his eyes and let the heat flow into it.
There was an instant of scuffling and the rock was surrounded by slumbering forms. “Thank you boss,” Sebaceous whispered.
As Bill looked over at the elf, he thought he caught a hint of anger in her expression before she turned, held her hands up to the rock face and said “It is open.”
#
Chortley was heading north towards Montesham and his ancestral home, though he wasn’t sure what he would do when he arrived. Get arrested, tried in a kangaroo court and strung up on the city walls (in separate pieces) in all likelihood. And so it was a gloomy Chortley who sat atop his horse, content to let it amble along the metalled road that linked Crapplecreek and Varma.
To make matters worse, he was being followed - by possibly the most incompetent scout ever to plague the roads. Yes, Shep the Lep was schlepping along the road behind him. Chortley almost felt sorry for him and had stopped amusing himself by suddenly turning around on his horse only to watch Shepperd’s legs disappearing into a roadside hedge or ditch. It was, after all, perfectly possible that the leg would be left behind when the leper hopped back onto the road to continue his dogged pursuit.
But Chortley let him follow, even slowing his pace to ensure Shepperd could keep up. In the complete absence of any other plan, finding out who the leper was working for would at least give him a direction. Or the short path to the city dungeon. Chortley’s anger at being accused of his father’s death17 was only going to fuel him for so long, however. As he meandered his way towards Montesham he pondered his options. And then decided he had none.
And so it was that he almost didn’t notice that the pigeons he could hear copulating in the small stand of trees to the right of the road weren’t birds at all, unless these particular pigeons had a bad case of the flux. He pulled his sword from his belt and called into the undergrowth.
“You might as well come out, I know you’re in there and, frankly, I couldn’t care less who you are.” He waved the point of his sword in the general direction of the shrubbery, uncertain whether he was facing one man or a horde. A huge shape loomed through the leaves and Chortley half expected to see an ape explode from the bushes intent on tearing him limb from limb, or asking for a banana. And he was nearly right.
“Thun?”
It was indeed the barbarian who emerged onto the road, brushing down his scarred torso before scratching at his tree-trunk legs. “Stings,” he said, by way of a greeting.
Chortley looked past Thun (not an easy feat) and into the gloom. The summer lanes of Fitzmichael County were annoyingly noisy as insects, birds, leaves and weather fought to obscure the quieter sound just on the edge of hearing.
“I can hear you McGuff,” Chortley said. “You are a more incompetent spy than that idiot following me.” He jerked a thumb up the road and was rewarded with the sound of a heavy object landing in a hawthorn hedge.
Sergeant-Major Sandy McGuff emerged from the copse flanked by Enoch Epocrypha who as, at this time of the year, accompanied by a swarm of flies, the diminutive Laxity Minissun and, finally, Jonathan Clegg who stood, blinking in the sunshine and flicked leaves and twigs from his tunic.
McGuff sprang a salute. “Sah!”
“What are you doing here?” Chortley asked, dropping his sword. “Have you been sent to arrest me?”
“Nossir,” McGuff said, grinning. “We has been assigned to reconnoitre the countryside on orders of the temporary commander of the garrison.”
Chortley was puzzled. “Really? He let you out to just wander around?”
“Oh yessir, it’s all in them written orders.”
Clegg reached to an inside pocket and drew out a small piece of parchment. “I wrote the orders.”
Chortley took the parchment and unfolded it.
“‘You is to reconnoitre the countryside hereabouts and h’apprehend any criminals wot you comes across’.” Chortley could see Clegg wince out of the corner of his eye as he read the orders.
“Did you dictate these orders, sergeant-major?”
McGuff reddened. “Yessir, I did. Seemed to me we needed something official-like to wave around if we was questioned. Old lah-de-dah there wanted to put it in proper language, but I said his words were longer than mine and we didn’t ‘ave time. Most soldiers can’t read, anyway. It’s the parchment and the handwritin’ what counts.”
“And it’s certainly excellently written,” Chortley said, though he noticed that Clegg’s hand had shaken at the word ‘wot’. They must have been in a hurry or the adjutant wouldn’t have done it at all.
“What have you done, sergeant-major?” Chortley said.
McGuff’s face fell and he shook his head. “Not a sergeant-major no longer, sir.”
“Why not?”
McGuff looked up at Chortley, his eyes moist. “There’s a new governor of Crapplecreek, sir. Man by the name of Wiggins.”
“Yes, I know him. One of the toadies at my father’s court. A malicious bastard.”
“Well, as soon as he arrived, he orders that none of the cracked squad is to leave barracks until you is captured and safely in the Montesham lockups. Then he sends out search parties. It’s a miracle you’ve escaped so far, sir.”
Chortley smiled. “Oh, I can be pretty slippery when I need to be. And I doubt they expected to find me on the road to Montesham.”
“Ah well, that’s right sir,” McGuff said. “But I said to Minissun here, I said, the captain, he’ll head straight for the heart of the problem. He’ll try to deal with his sister. And Clegg here, he said that would be suicide and no-one could be that stupid, beggin’ your pardon sir.”
“And I said,” interjected Epocrypha, “that I could get us out of the town once we were out of the dungeon. I knows the sewers like the back of my arse.”
“So, how did you get out?” Chortley asked. While they wouldn’t have been the first prisoners to escape the Crapplecreek dungeons (See Myths and Magic), security had been tightened considerably since then.
McGuff pointed up at the barbarian looming over his shoulder. “Thun, sir.”
“Ah, I see. And so here you are now.”
McGuff saluted with such vigour that he nearly decapitated himself. “Yessir, here to assist in any way we can.”
“And do you have a plan?”
“Nossir, plans is for h’officers.”
Chortley gestured at the rustling bush some 50 yards back along the lane. “And Sheppard?”
“He’s been our watchman since this whole affair started, sir. I sent him to keep an eye out for you, and to lend you a hand if he possibly could.”
“Well, right now, it looks as though he could do with a leg-up,” Chortley said. He watched as the cracked squad ambled to help their spy. Loyalty, he’d been taught, was bred through fear and he’d certainly given this lot enough of that in the past months. And yet McGuff and the others had risked their lives to come to his aid when they could easily have left him to rot in his own family juices. Idiots.
Chapter 9
BRIANNA SNEAKED INTO A DARK corner of The Midden and slid along the bench. Famous for being the last pub on the official pub crawl of Crapplecreek18, The Midden was studiously avoided by any citizen with the remotest crumb of self-respect. So, the clientele mainly consisted of the lower ranks of the local garrison, many of them heroes of two wars against Fairie,19 along with many practitioners of those essential tasks that must be carried out in order for so
ciety to function, but which civilised folk like to pretend happen by magic.
So, alongside the privates and corporals sat middeners, undertakers and abattoir workers. The previous landlord had suggested that, in order to boost trade, he should allow tax collectors, cart salesmen and agents of estate to join but, with many a shaking head, it had been decided that this would be crossing a line that ought not be traversed in any sort of decent universe. Anyway, they had the Conservative Club.
Brianna, as a stranger here, had been forced to undergo questioning from Ronaldo the barman before she could buy a drink. Fortunately, she’d heard about this place and its rather stringent entry requirements, so she’d had time to concoct a story. She was, therefore, introduced to the company as Brianna the lice-picker on holiday from the lice paddies of the south. She’d decided, on balance, not to attempt a southern accent as she felt she was pushing the borders of credulity as it was.
“I’m here,” she said, nudging the cloaked form next to her on the bench.
She caught a flash of ice-blue eyes as the figure turned. “So I see. I expects this is extremely urgent.”
Brianna sighed and nodded at the person sitting on the other side of the table.
“Hello, love,” said Flem Hemlock.
“Shut your big trap, Flem Hemlock,” hissed the cloak next to Brianna.
“Mum!”
“And you! We’re supposed to be going incontinent,” snapped Mother Hemlock, who’d never felt the need to get the hang of whispering.
“Incognito,” Brianna said.
“And that.”
Flem leaned across the table. “So, you’re a lice picker then.”
“It was all I could think of. I knew a licker once, met her in a pub. Amazing teeth she had - something to do with calcium. Couldn’t hold her drink, though, as I remember.20Anyway, I didn’t think anyone would ask questions, on account of not wanting to know the answers. Seems to have worked. So, what’s your cover?” Brianna raised the beer mug to her lips.
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