In the end what still had her jumping at small sounds and random shadows was the same thing that had sent her scurrying away in the night when she’d first encountered Scarlet on that stormy night in Denecia. Despite the woman’s slightly different features, that had been the same…person? Creature? Keely was sure of it.
Physical age seemed to be nothing but a state of mind to Scarlet. It was obvious that she didn’t play by the usual rules, either physically or mentally, and what you couldn’t predict you couldn’t outwit or evade, and that robbed Keely of most of her favorite options right there. Dealing with something like that, either you got lucky or you got hit head-on by whatever they had to throw at you.
Worse, Scarlet wasn’t the only thing out here that didn’t play by the rules. There had also been that presence in the bone pit, and even the wolves weren’t acting like wolves.
A few times before dawn, a sudden movement among the trees nearly startled Keely into shifting back to human form, but it always turned out to be some creature retreating before their advance through the forest. She was relieved to have managed to stay feline on more than one account.
First on the list, it would have blinded her instantly until she could stumble back to the lantern light. Second, there was no guarantee that whatever they ran into wouldn’t be predator enough to try tackling a human, even though there would be fewer of those than of the ones willing to take on a cat.
And although years of practice had allowed her to make the transformation look easy, the shift still took its toll. A muscled laborer might make it look effortless to throw a heavy sack across his shoulder, but after doing that a few dozen times, it could still start to slow him down. Operating on a short night’s sleep like everyone else, she needed to pace her exertions to make sure she was out of the forest before mental fatigue caught up with her.
Dawn arrived without real incident, and Keely retreated with relief to perch on the pony while it ambled along through the trees. They seemed to be passing near the lake again, now. She could smell it, and a thick morning fog had rolled in off the water to keep the forest obscured in a dismal, gray blanket long after the sun should have started dappling the forest floor.
But provided this really was the same lake as before, that meant they were most of the way back to the hedge that marked the outer boundary of the forest. Passing through the hedge would hardly mean they were safe, but it would offer one less immediate worry and should afford them a chance to take stock and regroup.
The down side to riding, resting her legs, was that it left Keely without much to do but think. Up to now, she’d been largely managing to distract herself from mulling over that latest nightmare. She recalled this one better than most, even if most of what she remembered was a confusing jumble. On top of all the other worrying bits, it had left her with the nagging feeling that Scarlet was…that Scarlet had…
Suddenly it all made sense. Everything about the night of page thirteen was so fractured and confused because Scarlet had really been there and had messed with her head. There was no telling what magic like that could do once it started rattling around in your skull. That explained why she had memories she couldn’t have, and why it could become so hard for her to sort her own thoughts out from Jenny’s when the world went topsy-turvy.
It also explained the nomadic sort of borrowed existence her friends had been stuck with for so long. Maybe that’s what happened to people Scarlet killed in a dream, given the way the dream injuries Scarlet dished out had partly followed Keely back into the waking world.
Only two details continued to nag at Keely’s mind. One, clearly, was the timing of having this monster and the Inquisition both show up on a rampage in the same backwater town on the same night. It stretched the credulity of coincidence to the breaking point. So if she ruled out coincidence, then…
“We’ve got to take her cloak!” Keely blurted out. When the others just stared, she began to muster her thoughts to explain, then realized they were actually staring because she’d just gone back human without thinking about it. She hastily grabbed for her clothes where they’d been left on the front of the saddle, and she pulled them on before continuing.
“Scarlet’s magic tricks are all in that bright red cloak of hers. We take the cloak, she’s just a girl. Or a woman. Or maybe she crumbles to dust from old age. The point is, she’s powerless without her cloak.”
“And you know this because…?” Ulric asked, cocking an eyebrow.
“Because it makes too much sense not to be true. I’m not asking anyone to hunt her down and steal her cloak. I’m just saying, if push comes to shove, that’s how to take her down. The cloak is her power and her weakness.”
Ulric nodded slowly. “If push comes to shove, I’m still going to try driving a sword through her heart. If that doesn’t faze her, the cloak is worth a try.”
As if the forest thought this all a good joke, a peal of mad laughter echoed distantly through the fog.
“Same guy from yesterday?” Evadne mused.
“Not sure it’s a guy,” Doryne said. “You know those wild dogs that are supposed to ‘laugh’?”
“You mean hyenas?” Elissa asked.
“That laugh did have a ‘beastly’ edge to it,” Tobias agreed as he turned slowly about, trying to pinpoint which direction the sound had come from.
“Don’t bother,” Minda said, noticing what Tobias was up to as she glanced back over her shoulder from the front of the expedition. “The way sound bounces around back in these hills, something that sounds two hundred yards to your right might be coming from four hundred to your left.”
“I’ve never heard a hyena,” Elissa said. “There shouldn’t be one for many hundreds of miles around here, but I suppose one could have been brought in by a traveling carnival and got loose.”
“Or two got loose,” Minda said, as an answering laugh sounded considerably closer. “I’m definitely with the animal theory now. The echoes don’t shift quickly enough for that to have been the same person. And there can’t be two madmen out here who sound like that, can there?” She hefted Artema and inspected the rifle’s readiness. “Doryne, be ready to toss me my backup.”
Silence descended again as they pushed on through the mist-shrouded forest with the entire group back on heightened alert. Even Tobias seemed a bit grim and on-edge, doubtless helped along by the mess Scarlet had left on their doorstep in the night. They’d gone on for another quarter hour or so and started following a discernible trail along the shore of the lake before finding the way blocked by a figure appearing through the mist.
A faint breeze gently rustled the figure’s tattered red cloak as it stood silently in the middle of the path. A dozen or more human skulls lay scattered randomly on the ground in front of it.
“The forest is yours, uncontested,” Ulric said, stepping up beside Minda. “We got the message, and we’re leaving as quickly as the light will allow.”
Baldassare shouldered up past Ulric. “Where’s my sister?” he demanded. “I know you took her. You were the little girl who led her here in the first place. Some of us wouldn’t have come here at all if you hadn’t done that.”
The figure remained still, silent, and impassive.
Behind them, Evadne sighed, and suddenly a rock came sailing over their heads, knocking back the hood of the cloak and sending the skull beneath spinning on its post. “I’m so sick of scarecrows,” she said, without any surprise in her voice.
“Who puts a scarecrow in the middle of a forest?” Conrad asked.
“Whoever strung up the skulls we had to duck around getting to Caer Cacamwri,” Doryne said. “The Tuatha probably put it here after their fight with the Inquisition. Go’ss, I hope they’ve gone back deeper into the forest.”
Minda crouched down to inspect the ground. “This isn’t that part of the lake,” she said. “No fight, and not a lot of traffic here recently.”
“We need to assume this means they’re nearby, though,” Ulric said. “Terr
itorial marker. Lady Minda, is there a good route that won’t take us on through…” Ulric trailed off as the skull rotated slowly back around and paused as if regarding them with the points of red light that had begun to flicker in its eye sockets.
The ensuing silence was broken by the ring of steel and a guttural snarl as Tobias drew his sword and came charging forward. The jaw of the skull dropped open, appearing against all reason to emit an animalistic shriek—which then died abruptly as Tobias’ sword connected in a two-handed sweep that shattered bone, snapped the top off the post, and sent the whole business spinning away into the lake, the tattered cloak trailing behind like the tail of a comet.
“I am leaving this forest,” Tobias said, kicking one skull after another out of the path and into the lake, even though they otherwise remained unmoving, “to see everyone out safe. I am not running from anything, and I will not be herded anywhere as anything’s prey. If this is the best way out, this is the way we’re going.”
“You’re right.” Ulric nodded. “If the forest is going to be that way, we’re done treading lightly. Everyone, this is the final push. We’re making straight for the hedge, and we’re rolling over anything that gets in our way.”
They formed up with Ulric at point now, Baldassare flanking his left and Tobias on his right to lead with a wedge. Behind came Minda with her rifle, Doryne with her crossbow, and Conrad following them with the ammunition and Minda’s back-up hunting rifle.
Elissa, who was tiring more than anyone, and whose idea of a fight was to debate the virtues of various systems of library cataloging, found herself on the pony along with Keely, who rode as a cat once more. Nolan and Evadne came last as the rear guard. So organized, they broke into a quick step that had them covering ground nearly twice as fast as before.
The first thing that got in their way, not five minutes later, was clad in black and red. A company of knights of the Inquisition appeared abruptly out of the fog and opted to forgo the traditional threats and rhetoric in favor of an enraged battle cry and a headlong charge. Ulric, Tobias, and Baldassare all ducked aside, and Minda dropped the lead knight with a bullet between the eyes before he’d gone two paces. The man sprawled face down into the muddy earth, his sword clattering away off a tree root as it slipped from his grasp, and he lay still.
Doryne lacked Minda’s deadly precision, but she still managed to punch a crossbow bolt through the armored shoulder of the second man, and it sent him reeling away in pain. Conrad had begun to toss Minda her back-up rifle even as she spun around for it. She grabbed it out of the air one-handed, using the other to toss Artema to him, and she finished the smooth motion by pulling the new gun up to sighting position as she came back around to face the onrushing knights.
Haste and the idiosyncrasies of the less favored weapon combined to throw Minda’s aim off, and instead of hitting the next man between the eyes, her second bullet entered his skull through the left eye socket. The net effect remained the same.
That left seven armored knights charging toward them, and no time for another volley. Ulric, Tobias, and Baldassare stepped back in to meet the charge with a charge of their own, metal ringing through the forest as the two sides clashed.
“This is wrong,” Doryne said, her eyes dancing across the battlefield as she did a quick head count. “Something’s wrong.”
Nolan and Evadne charged past on either side to join the fray, Nolan tossing his rifle into Minda’s hands on the way past.
“What’s wrong?” Elissa asked, clutching Keely to her chest in alarm as she might a pet.
“Go’ss, she’s right,” Minda said. “There weren’t fifteen knights of the Inquisition in the county when we left the castle. After yesterday, they couldn’t have had even ten in any sort of fighting shape, but not one of these men showed up bloodied. I don’t recognize any of those shields, either. They’ve had reinforcements already. Very, very not good.”
For all that the Inquisition had shown up ready for a fight, it didn’t appear that they’d actually expected to get one. They’d only kept charging despite their losses because charging was what the Inquisition did, and now they seemed a bit disoriented by the fact that the enemy hadn’t turned and fled.
Perhaps no one had informed the reinforcements yet that they were in a desperate struggle with a ruthless witch, her army of henchmen, and forest full of heathen savages? Whatever the ultimate source of their confusion, and however small the impact on their reaction time, it wound up costing the knights dearly.
A parry that only came late by the blink of an eye did a man no more good than a parry that was never executed, and Tobias and Baldassare both possessed the speed to capitalize on that fact. Before the knights knew what was happening, another of their number lay bleeding out on the ground and one had been thrown from his feet, affording Nolan the moment needed to step in and finish the man with a well-placed thrust before he could rise back up in his heavy breastplate.
Then Evadne managed to slip past the guard of a third knight to close with such force that her momentum carried them both off of the trail and down the steep embankment into the lake, where she landed on top of him, snarling, and forced his head beneath the water with one hand while she pinned his sword arm down with the other.
As had been discovered the day before, even the most devout fanatic has his breaking point. The remaining men turned and ran.
Minda had just finished reloading Artema when Evadne came wading out of the lake, dragging the limp form of the man she’d either drowned or nearly drowned. Grim, drenched, and bedraggled, with her hair all a mess and someone’s blood from the fight spattered across her face, the giantess suddenly struck Keely as one of the last people she ever wanted to cross. It wasn’t just the woman’s size or her skill in a brawl, but the pure savage abandon with which Evadne threw herself into a fight, completely at odds with her apparent station as a gentlewoman.
“Want a hand with…” Nolan began to offer Evadne, then stopped short as the shaft of an arrow stopped, quivering in the ground, not two inches from his foot. All eyes turned to see scores of other arrows arcing high across the mist-shrouded lake.
No one needed Ulric’s hastily barked order to pull back into the trees, which was good, because the deadly hail of arrows was already pelting down around them in earnest before he could get it out. Minda’s marksmanship may have paved the way to an easy route of the Inquisition, but it had also announced loud and clear to the Tuatha where to find armed intruders in their forest.
In the time-honored tradition of battlefield archers, the Tuatha weren’t worried about the fact they couldn’t target individuals through that fog, they were just filling the air with countless pointy things and trusting to the odds that some of those would wind up trying to occupy the same space as their enemies.
The pony screamed and stumbled, spilling Elissa and Keely onto the ground. Keely landed lightly on feline feet, and Elissa rolled away as expertly as any equestrian could hope, but there was no pretending that the animal was going to make it out of the forest alive, or carry a load any further for them. With a grimace of regret, Elissa turned away from the pony and continued scrambling for cover, only just thinking to grab Keely’s clothes from where they’d tumbled in the mud.
The mad rush stopped about twenty yards back from the shore, where the trees of the forest offered sufficient cover to shelter behind with confidence. A scattering of arrows continued to pelt in from across the lake, but any that got near sunk harmlessly into the trunks of the great trees.
“Are we all here?” Ulric demanded.
“Mostly,” Baldassare answered through gritted teeth, clutching at his sword arm. Blood already drenched his sleeve and the chest of his tunic where an arrow had cut a deep gash across the bicep and a shallow line across his chest.
“On it,” Doryne said, stepping smartly in and holding a knife up to Baldassare’s ruined tunic until he nodded his acquiescence. Then she set to cutting it off him and using strips to bind the wounds.
“Where’s Keely?” Elissa asked in a panic. “Keely?!”
Several long heartbeats passed before the little white cat came scurrying up, not waiting to get into her clothes before transforming.
“Hush!” Keely said urgently, taking the bundle from Elissa. “Those knights were just the vanguard. We’ve got more Inquisition coming in fast, and I’m pretty sure there are Tuatha headed this way around the lake.” A burst of unnerving laughter echoed through the forest again, this time disturbingly close—as was the answering laugh, and the one that followed on its heels. “Then there’s that.”
“Of course being caught between two armies wasn’t bad enough,” Nolan muttered.
“My turn again,” Minda snapped. “Come on!”
“Hold on!” Doryne called, hurrying to finish binding at least the deep cut across Baldassare’s arm, but Minda was already moving out. Urged on by Ulric, the others fell in to single file behind Minda, stringing out in a tail to keep her in sight while lingering as long as possible to keep Doryne and Baldassare from being left behind. Ulric stayed ‘til last, waiting for Doryne to finish her work on Baldassare, then shooed them on ahead.
Every fifty feet or so, Minda paused, inspecting the trees before taking off at a run again, often in a new direction. The pauses allowed the rest of the group to form up again fairly well before Minda stopped at one of the larger, more gnarled trees and slung Artema across her back.
“Up up up,” she ordered as she began to scramble upward herself, the tree providing hand and footholds so numerous that even the wounded Baldassare was able to climb it with some help from Evadne. Forty feet above the forest floor they reached a sturdy plank walkway suspended from thick ropes, heading off through the branches in two directions. “The Haywood family doesn’t stint when it comes to backup plans,” Minda said. “I would have pointed us this way sooner if it wouldn’t have meant leaving Doryne’s poor pony to fend for herself.”
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 39
