by Colin Meloy
“Hello there, turncoat,” said the coyote, immediately recognizing Curtis from his time in the warren. “This is a pleasant surprise.” He grinned, his face carved from jowl to jowl by a string of long yellow teeth. He held the pistol jauntily in his paw, prolonging the moment. “I’m going to enjoy this. I’m going to enjoy this very much.” He paused and scratched his snout with the muzzle of the gun. “Might be a promotion in it for me—I’ll be a decorated war hero. Sergei, turncoat slayer. That’s what they’ll call me.”
“Please,” said Curtis, backing up against the trunk of a tree. “Let’s talk this through. You don’t need to do this.”
“Oh, but I do,” corrected the sergeant. “I really, really do.” He held the pistol at arm’s length, carefully taking aim at Curtis.
Curtis squeezed his eyes shut, waiting for the shot.
Plonk.
The noise came suddenly, and Curtis quickly opened his eyes. Another plonk. The coyote, his pistol still outstretched, was being assaulted from above by plums.
“What the devil?” shouted the coyote, searching the branches of the plum tree. The snout of a rat appeared from behind a curtain of yellow leaves.
“Hey, mutt!” cried the rat. Curtis saw that it was Septimus. “Up here!”
The coyote, enraged, had lifted the pistol and was beginning to take aim at Septimus when Curtis spied his chance. He leapt from the ground and bowled into the coyote sergeant with all the force he could muster. His head connected with the coyote’s belly, and Curtis could feel it deflate like a balloon, the air escaping through the coyote’s mouth with a loud “Oof!” The coyote crumpled at the force, and the two of them went tumbling to the ground. Curtis reached for the pistol, and the coyote, regaining his senses, struggled to keep the gun from his attacker. Finally, in the chaos, Curtis was able to get his hands cupped over the coyote’s grip on the pistol handle and began trying to wrest it away. The coyote began kicking his hind paws into Curtis’s stomach, and he could feel the claws scratching painful scores across the skin under his uniform. The coyote, above him now, yelped in frustration as he tried to regain control of the gun. Curtis pulled it toward him, the cool metal of the barrel pressing up against his cheek.
BANG!
Curtis flinched. Had the pistol gone off in his hand? Had he been shot?
The coyote’s strong grip on the pistol loosened, and his paws fell away. Curtis saw that his eyes had rolled back in his head and his tongue lolled out of his mouth like a fat slug. The coyote collapsed, lifeless, on top of Curtis.
Shoving the sergeant’s body aside, Curtis jumped up and looked around him. He was surprised to see Aisling standing not far off, a little wisp of smoke drifting up from the muzzle of her pistol. She wore a shocked look on her face.
“I—” she stammered, “I—I hadn’t—I hadn’t used it yet.”
A whistle sounded from the plum tree boughs. “And not a moment too soon,” complimented Septimus.
Curtis, sympathetic to the girl’s shock, walked over to her and took her hand. “Thank you,” he said. “I don’t know what would’ve happened.”
Aisling forced a smile. “Well, there you go,” she said. “Good thing you gave me this.”
The clamor of the fighting behind them arrested them from their conversation, and they gave each other a final, fleeting look before Curtis ran back into the battle. Aisling remained, motionless, in the Grove, looking down at the pistol in her hand.
The tide had clearly turned for the worse. Prue stood on the top stair of the ancient steps, staring out over the clearing as the coyote reinforcements poured in from the far side. She’d seen a small wave of Cormac’s unit appear at the lip of this slope, being pressed backward by the crush of coyote soldiers. Before long they were forced into the middle tier and were reunited with Brendan’s unit, though both troops had been badly diminished. The Wildwood Irregulars appeared to be hopelessly separated, with the conjoined soldiers of Brendan’s and Cormac’s units surrounded in the bowl of the middle tier and the remnants of Sterling’s troop having been chased over the edge of the south ridge.
The Governess, seizing her moment, began careening her horse across the sea of bodies toward the steps that led to the upper clearing. Brendan saw her move and yelled something at the few bandits who fought at his side; they, together, began fighting their way toward Alexandra’s intended path.
Prue didn’t see how it happened—the action in the clearing was much too fast and chaotic to see clearly—but in the few seconds between Brendan’s sighting of Alexandra and his arrival at the spot in front of her horse, a shot had been fired from somewhere far off. Prue couldn’t tell if it had been a coyote sharpshooter, lodged in a tree somewhere, or perhaps a misfire from a fellow Irregular, but its object was clear: Brendan’s head flew back in an agonized yell and he fell away from the charging horse, a bright splash of red suddenly appearing on the shoulder of his white shirt.
Seeing the Bandit King struck low, the surrounding soldiers, human and coyote alike, paused in their fighting to watch him stumble backward and fall to the ground. The bandits howled in anger and despair, but no sooner were they able to bear witness to the King’s wounds than a fresh wave of coyote soldiers fell on them, and they leapt with a renewed ferocity back into battle. Brendan, abandoned, lay in the trampled ivy vines of the clearing floor, his fingers clutching at his shoulder.
“NO!” shouted Prue, and without thinking, she dove down the marble steps into the horde of battling soldiers.
In the frenzy of the battle, she was able to slip through relatively unnoticed. One coyote grunt, having dispatched his opponent, spotted her as she made her way toward Brendan and dove to intercept her. He was stopped short when one of the Irregulars, a stoat in coveralls, swung the iron blade of a shovel in front of him and the two fell into fierce combat. Another coyote turned to see her as she crawled between the backs of two battling soldiers, and aimed the long barrel of his rifle at her; an arrow thunked into his chest and he fell, yelping, to the ground.
Brendan was crawling helplessly across the ivy-strewn stone of the clearing when Prue finally arrived at his side. He’d made little distance; the green leaves of the ivy were spattered with his blood, making a dotted trail of crimson red behind him.
“Brendan!” she shouted, grasping for his arm.
He turned his face to her. His eyes were glassy and his beard was matted with dirt, sweat, and blood. His white shirt was now soaked red, and his hale coloring was slowly disappearing from the skin of his face.
“Outsider,” he croaked, his cracked lips forced apart in a wry smile. “Sweet girl.” He glanced over at the wound in his shoulder and spat angrily on the ground. “Fifteen generations of bandits,” he said. “Fifteen kings. And I’m felled by a cursed gunshot.” He looked back at Prue. “I don’t want to die,” he said, his face soft and quieted. “I want to keep here. Help me keep here.”
Prue, her face streaming with tears, tore her hoodie off and packed the cotton fabric against the flow of blood from his shoulder. The green of the hoodie turned brown as the cloth became soaked in the blood.
“You’ll be okay, King,” said Prue. “We’ve just got to stop this bleeding.”
Desperately scanning the clash of the battle behind them, Prue searched the crowd for another bandit who might be able to help; her first aid knowledge was woefully little. “Help!” she cried. “The King! He’s been shot!”
Suddenly, a long shadow fell over Prue and the prone form of the Bandit King. Prue squinted upward to see Alexandra, steeple-tall in the saddle of her black stallion as the horse reared dramatically, his forelegs sending up a spray of earth. Her sword was drawn, and she held it above her head, the blade wet with blood. The baby in her saddlebag wailed.
“Your time is over, Bandit King,” she said. “A new era in Wildwood has begun.”
Without a further word, she spurred the flanks of her horse and vaulted over the two of them, Prue and Brendan, in a single leap, galloping to
ward the unguarded marble stairs that led to the ruined basilica’s upper tier.
CHAPTER 27
The Ivy and the Plinth
The tattered and disjointed remains of Sterling’s troop were easily corralled down the slope of the hill away from the basilica, though many continued to fire quick, errant shots back into the horde of pursuing coyotes as they went. Those who survived the routing found cover on a wide granite promontory built atop a large pile of massive boulders. The ruins of a felled tower were here; only the foundation remained. As Curtis sprinted toward this refuge, ducking a fresh hail of gunfire from the coyote fusiliers, he saw Sterling, waving him forward.
“Come on!” he cried. “Quickly!”
He shot up the broken staircase and threw himself down on the stone floor of the promontory. A short rock wall, the scant remnant of the ancient foundation, made a kind of low palisade around the edge, and it was behind this that the small troop of Irregulars found cover. Behind the promontory, the ground fell away to a deep ravine.
Curtis crawled to the wall and peeked out over the top. The sloping hillside was awash with coyote soldiers, a seemingly endless supply pouring down from the ridge above. The promontory held around fifty bandits and farmers, sitting with their backs pressed to the wall. They took turns popping up over the edge of the wall and firing into the onslaught of coyotes. The close air was sharp with the smell of sweat and gunpowder. A bandit, his leg badly wounded, was being comforted by a fellow soldier in the corner of the foundation. The grime-streaked faces Curtis saw inside the low walls of the ruined building were sorrow-laden, the troop desperately demoralized.
The approaching coyotes heeded their captains’ orders and dug in behind whatever cover was available to them in the terraced sculpture garden. Their numbers grew and grew as more reinforcements, freed from the fighting in the basilica, joined their compatriots on the hillside. The tree branches became leaden with the weight of the scores of black crows, watching the scene play out from above.
One of the coyote captains stuck his head from behind his cover and cried out, “You’re surrounded! Give yourselves up! There’s nowhere for you to go!”
Sterling, his back against the edge of the wall next to the staircase, eyed the huddled group of farmers and bandits. “Well, folks,” he said. “It’s come down to this.” He paused his clawed fingers working over the handle of his pruning shears. “I don’t blame you if you want to give yourselves up. Any man, woman, or animal who wants to do that, I suggest you go now.”
No one moved. The distant sound of gunfire could be heard up over the ridge.
Sterling nodded. “All right then,” he said. “Unto the breach, it is.”
The gathered remnants of the Wildwood Irregulars nodded in agreement.
The fox took a deep breath. “On my mark,” he said. “One . . . two . . .”
“My King!” shouted a voice from behind Prue; she turned to see a bandit sprinting to their side from among the clashing soldiers in the basin of the clearing. Prue had Brendan’s head cradled in her lap, and she was using all the strength she could conjure to hold the blood-soaked hoodie to the fallen Bandit King’s deep wound. “What happened?” asked the bandit frantically.
“A shot—I don’t know where from,” Prue sputtered. “A bullet. In his shoulder.” She peeled her jacket away to reveal the torn fabric of his shirt, saturated with blood, clinging to the skin of his chest.
The bandit grimaced. “Hold on,” he said. He reached into a leather bag at his hip and pulled out a little tincture bottle. Dripping a few droplets of a hazel-brown liquid onto a clutch of torn ivy leaves, he packed the poultice against Brendan’s shoulder, using Prue’s sweatshirt as a secondary bandage. Brendan winced when the liquid came in contact with the open wound, and the bandit grabbed his hand and gripped it.
“Breathe into the pain, Brendan,” the bandit said calmly. The battle still raged behind them. He looked up at Prue. “Erigeron cinnamon,” he explained. “Strong stuff. It should help stop the bleeding.” Brendan’s eyes were fluttering as he battled to stay conscious against the rush of pain.
“I’ve got to go,” said Prue. “Stay with him?” She knew that Alexandra would be moving on the Plinth. There was no one left to stop her.
The bandit nodded and Prue jumped up, running for the stone staircase to the third tier of the basilica.
She leapt the stairs, two at a go, until she’d made the top of the slope and her feet met the tangled carpet of ivy. In the middle of the clearing, Alexandra was dismounting from her horse and pulling the wailing baby from the leather saddlebag. The Plinth, its base all snaked with ivy, stood in the center of the square. Prue stood at the top of the stairs and opened her mouth to scream.
“Alexandra!”
The voice had not been hers. Instead, it came from the other side of the clearing. Prue, her mouth clapping closed, stared across the wide ivy-strewn plaza to see Iphigenia, the Elder Mystic, making her way through the dense ground cover toward the Governess.
“Put the baby down,” she demanded.
The Governess stifled a laugh.
“Iphigenia,” she said archly. “Dear Iphigenia. I should’ve known that your hand was in this little bagatelle you set for my armies—those poor farmers you’ve sent to their deaths. Well, you’ve arrived just in time. The ceremony will soon be complete.”
“You will only mark yourself as a murderess,” said Iphigenia flatly.
“I am freeing a natural force from its imposed slumber,” replied Alexandra. “Allowing it to once again assume its prior dominance in the wild world. To a godless naturalist such as yourself, this must seem a real setting to rights.”
“It will consume you when it’s finished tearing down every tree in the forest; don’t think you’re immune. And the coyotes, that innocent species you’ve conscripted, do they know the true consequences? Have you told them that their warrens will be invaded and their waiting broods, their wives and pups, will be smothered?”
“Pish,” dismissed the Governess. “Those hapless dogs? The illusion of power is manna enough for them. I’ve given them more in the last fifteen years than they’ve ever enjoyed in the history of their breed. When they are extinguished, at least they’ll die an elevated species. As for me, I wouldn’t concern yourself with my outcome. I’ll have slept the ivy long before it can get its vines around me.”
Iphigenia frowned, her face set with worry. “Don’t assume it’s so easy to control. Once you’ve started this wheel in motion, there’s no stopping.”
The Governess laughed. “Can I assume that I have your sanction, then, to continue? Or are you going to keep distracting me from the task at hand?”
The Mystic spoke, but Prue couldn’t make out the words. It was something intoned to herself, as if she were assuring herself of her own beliefs. The Governess looked at her askance, before striding the short distance to the waiting Plinth. With her free hand, she drew a long dagger from her belt. Prue, desperate, jumped forward.
“Please, Alexandra!” she cried. “Don’t do this!”
Alexandra stopped and looked over at Prue. She flared her eyes. “Please, if you don’t mind,” she said, “I hadn’t expected an audience to this. This is a great moment for me. I’d like it to not be ruined by the miserable mewlings of a little girl and an old woman.”
“That’s my brother you’ve got there,” said Prue. “That’s my parents’ only son. You don’t know how much it would break their hearts.”
“Then they shouldn’t have made the deal,” replied Alexandra. “They were foolish, those Outsiders, but they certainly knew what they wanted. They wanted you.” Here the Dowager Governess pointed the knife at Prue. “And so they got you. Congratulations. You were born. I held up my side of the bargain. Come to think of it, if anyone is truly responsible for your brother’s death and your parents’ heartbreak, it’s you. Your very existence, your parents’ need for your existence, is the true root of this entire debacle. I’m merely a player i
n the drama.” She moved a few more feet toward the Plinth; she was now within a few yards.
“Would you have fed Alexei to the ivy in order to assume such power?” This came from Iphigenia, her voice firm.
The Governess froze.
“Would you?” pressed the Elder Mystic. “He was a baby once, I’m sure you recall. Such a beautiful child, that one.”
The color rose in Alexandra’s pale face, and she turned angrily toward Iphigenia. “I told you, old woman, not to distract me from my purpose. You both are becoming very irritating.”
“Poor Alexei,” said Iphigenia. “Not even your magics could bring him back into the world of the living.”
“But I did!” shouted Alexandra, her temper finally piqued. “I gave him life. Twice. I’d breathed life into that body once, why not a second time? Why should that be any different? It was his choice to die the second time. He could not appreciate the labor that I”—she pounded the hilt of the dagger against her chest—“that I underwent to give him new life. Each time. My idiot nephew and his underlings gave him his second death; they killed him and then they used his death as a motive to throw me from power. And so they will pay. They will pay with their lives. And their families’ lives.” The Governess regained her composure, her dagger at the ready. Mac was still crying in her arms, his face a deep red. “It’s really that simple.”
Prue, unmoored from her fears, leapt forward at a sprint and dove into the space between Alexandra and the Plinth, pressing her back against the cold stone of the short edifice. “Stop!” she yelled.
Rage distorted Alexandra’s porcelain features. She whipped the dagger in a clean arc across her body, slapping Prue on the cheek with the flat of the blade. The force of the blow sent Prue cartwheeling sideways into the plush tangle of the ivy. A sharp flush of pain burned at her cheek; a trickle of blood wet her lip.
