Shouts from down below in the direction of the lake announced that the Inquisition and the Tuatha had come face to face.
“How far will this take us?” Ulric asked as they set out. The plank bridge swayed constantly underfoot, but had been fenced in with enough rope to keep anyone from becoming overly concerned about their footing.
“It starts at the postern gate into the forest,” Minda grinned. “It’ll take us straight to the castle.”
“Not my first choice of destinations right now,” Ulric said, “but as long as we’re sneaking in the back, it’ll definitely do.”
They hurried on as quickly as the swaying bridge would allow, leaving behind the confrontation that sounded like it had become a pitched battle. What they weren’t leaving nearly far enough behind was that laughter. It kept coming in bursts, at shorter intervals and from more and more sources, until it had practically turned into a chorus. Sometimes one of the voices would erupt directly underfoot, its owner unseen through the mist and the thick foliage.
“Nothing’s that funny,” Conrad muttered.
During one particularly loud bout of laughter, the plank bridge began to shake wildly as off through the mists, shadows began to emerge, rushing toward them along its narrow pathway through the trees. Currently at point, Tobias pulled his sword and prepared to meet the charge, while everyone with a crossbow or rifle at hand took aim.
Even so, the ensuing shrieks caught them all off guard by being neither bestial nor monstrous, as half a dozen children came to a screeching halt, staring wide-eyed at their weapons.
“It’s all right!” Minda said, slinging her rifle and pushing past Tobias, rushing to meet the children. “Wenna! Siani!” she said, throwing her arms around two of the girls and pulling them to her. “What are you doing here?!”
“We’re playing hide-and-seek!” the older of the two declared as the shock of thinking they’d been waylaid in the fog began to fade.
“Oh, no,” Minda gasped.
“This is no time for games, children,” Evadne said kindly, coming to kneel where she could look some of them in the eye. “The forest is a dangerous place right now.”
“Well, it’s really not that bad, I suppose,” Minda said, laying an arm on Evadne’s and shooing her gently back toward the others. “Not so long as we’re keeping to the trees.”
“Lady Minda? Is that you?” A buxom, young, brown-haired woman came hurrying out of the fog behind the children. It took a moment before Elissa was able to place the woman as Nolan’s friend they’d encountered on the Wolf’s Tooth.
“Oh, good,” Minda said, looking up with a bright, brittle smile. “Just the woman I needed to talk to. Hello, Nessa. Kids, sit down a moment and catch your breath while you can. The game can wait a minute, can’t it, Nessa?” she asked with a questioning eyebrow.
“I…think so,” Nessa said hesitantly.
With a glance and a nod, Minda beckoned to Nolan, and he slipped past the children, catching a quick hug from Nessa on the way past.
“How bad is it?” Minda asked quietly when they’d pulled back away from the children. Most of the others gathered around, and neither woman made any attempt to discourage them.
“It’s bad, milady,” Nessa sighed miserably. “Is your father with you?” When Minda shook her head, Nessa added, “He led a search into the forest looking for you after the fire. No word from him yet.”
“He’ll be all right,” Minda said unhesitatingly. “It’s just a really big forest.”
“Then that’s my only good news,” Nessa said. “Jane Carver’s here. She’s declared reverential law.”
Minda blinked. “She…?”
“She’s denounced the entire county for heresy, milady. She took the cathedral site by force of arms, then came for the castle. She already had people inside, and it was barely garrisoned, what with all the emergencies pulling the men away.”
“What about my mother?” Minda demanded.
“Dead or prisoner,” Nessa said, tearing up. “I’m not sure. She sent me to see your sisters to safety when the fighting started, since I was no use in a fight but I knew the tunnels well enough to get out on my own. She knew the castle would fall if she did, the way things were. I’m sorry, milady. The war’s come and gone. We lost.”
“No!” Keely cut in. “The war’s not over. I’ll make it right!”
Nessa stared coldly at the silver-haired apparition in the tattered red outfit. “There are scores dead already,” Nessa said flatly. “Burned in the fire or cut down by the Inquisition. How will you make that right?”
“I…” Keely faltered.
“How?!” Nessa demanded loudly, forgetting herself.
To Keely’s horror, she was saved from answering when a sinuous gray tendril—barbed and about two fingers thick—lashed out of the fog. In the literal blink of an eye, the tendril had wound twice around Nessa’s throat. Bright blood welling where the barbs pierced her flesh, the young woman had time for one futile attempt at a scream, a heartbeat to raise her hands in an effort to claw at the tendril, and then she was gone, yanked headlong off the walkway and plummeting toward the ground.
Nessa vanished into the fog without a sound almost before anyone else could raise a hand.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Whiplash
For one long, stunned second, silence hung in the air. Then the children started to scream. From below, the insane laughter erupted again, and in such a cacophony that it began to sound like the baying of hounds. Most of the children turned and fled back the way they’d come.
“They can’t go back!” Minda shouted.
“And none of us can stay here,” Ulric barked.
Nolan swung himself between the ropes and began to lower himself toward the branches below.
“What are you doing?!” Ulric demanded.
“We can’t leave her,” Nolan snapped.
“Whatever she hit, she hit it headfirst,” Ulric said, grabbing for Nolan’s arm. “She’s dead, and they aren’t.” He thrust a finger in the direction of the children. “Keeping them that way comes first.”
Nolan grimaced and banged his head against a mercifully yielding support rope before wordlessly starting to haul himself back onto the plank bridge with Ulric’s help. He was halfway on when an alarmed look came over his face, and he suddenly shot a foot backwards before their combined grips jerked him to a stop.
Unslinging Artema again, Minda leaned out and fired. Her uncanny aim severed the slender tendril wrapped around Nolan’s ankle, freeing him from its grasp, and Nolan came lurching back up. Multiple helping hands quickly had him full onto the plank bridge.
“They heard us!” Elissa hissed urgently. “They didn’t see us, they’re just lashing out at the noise!” She glanced meaningfully after the fleeing children. It wasn’t at all hard to hear their retreating screams or the clattering of the planks under their feet, even in competition with the baying laughter from below.
“Up!” Minda pointed her sisters and the two other children who’d remained with them toward the nearest tree trunk. “And for go’ss sake don’t make a sound until I tell you it’s safe.”
Another tendril whipped at them from out of the fog. This time Tobias was ready and waiting, severing the thing with a flick of his blade before it could touch anyone.
“You’re going up with them,” Ulric told Minda. “You, too, Nolan.” Before releasing Nolan’s arm, Ulric added low enough to be sure that Minda wouldn’t hear above the eerie baying, “Pretend that’s everything left of house Haywood up that tree. If it’s not and we don’t bring them home safe…” He let the sentence trail off unfinished, but Nolan nodded his understanding.
When Ulric looked around, he found only Baldassare and Evadne standing there, back to back, peering into the fog warily with their blades drawn. The others had already taken off after the fleeing children.
There was no right way to do this, Keely observed as she dashed to catch up with Elissa and Doryne. If Elissa w
as right, whatever had yanked that woman off the bridge would not only be chasing after the children as they screamed and clattered away; it would be targeting the clatter and shouts of anyone who might be following the children, trying to get them to quiet down.
Worse, “running” on the suspended planks wound up being more of a drunken dance, with as much energy spent in staying upright as in moving forward. Even without a clear, uncluttered path on the forest floor, whatever was down there shouldn’t have much trouble keeping up with people on the plank bridge, or even overtaking them.
That left Keely as the only one qualified to actually follow the children under these conditions. As a cat, she could easily overtake the children, and do it in total silence. The problem arose once she got there. In their panic, they’d either totally ignore a strange cat or be further spooked by it.
On the other hand, if they saw a strange, naked, silver-haired woman stepping out of the fog in this dark forest, it could only make things worse. On top of every other factor, they would have been warned all their lives against the woman who lurked here, just waiting to take their heads.
Keely thought she’d recognized Addie, the girl from the castle chapel, among the children, but seriously doubted they’d built enough of a rapport for Keely to reach even her through the current insanity. Maybe she could get them to stop running, but not to stop screaming, and to have them stand still while they kept screaming would be about the only way to make things worse.
At least her clothes hadn’t been left totally behind when she’d gone feline this time. Tobias—with Conrad at his heels—had chased right after her and had been thoughtful enough to scoop her clothes up as he did. Still, it wouldn’t be any plus in getting the children to calm down if, instead of showing up naked, she showed up in a tattered costume meant specifically to conjure up thoughts of the very woman they’d been told to steer clear of.
Keely darted around the legs of Elissa and Doryne with her brain still racing furiously to come up with a plan, but it was getting nowhere fast. The children had gotten enough of a head start that it was hard to see them through the fog, but a sudden shriek pitched a couple of levels of panic above the others announced that she might already be too late.
Those children who could be made out through the fog skidded to a halt and headed back toward Keely, heedless of how close they came to trampling her on the narrow walkway. The first girl to reach Doryne threw herself into the woman’s arms, while the other children began crowding past to huddle behind her. Doryne just had time to set that first girl down with the others, then ready her crossbow, before an odd, flailing shadow loomed from the mist.
It resolved itself into the form of Scarlet—wearing the face and body of the young woman they’d met her as—holding a struggling child aloft by the throat in each hand. The boy in her left hand was a sandy-haired youth of maybe seven or eight, probably a courtier’s son to judge by his clothes. The girl in her right hand was Addie.
Scarlet clucked her tongue scoldingly as she advanced toward them, her cloak billowing around her though no breeze swirled the fog. “I’d say something about how you can’t leave yet, and a party,” Scarlet sighed, “but I just have the nagging feeling that one’s been used. How about, ‘Don’t go away before I tear your arms off, because that would be rude?’”
“How about you put the children down before I put a crossbow bolt through your chest?” Doryne offered, taking careful aim. Elissa and Keely both froze, trying to be not in the line of fire. Even Tobias coming up behind them slowed to a wary advance.
“You see, that doesn’t work for me.” Scarlet rolled her eyes as she continued unhurriedly forward, still holding the children aloft with no apparent effort. They clawed desperately at her arms, trying to free themselves, or at least to relieve the pressure on their throats, but Scarlet showed no sign of noticing the bloody scratches they’d managed to gouge around her wrists. “I can’t imagine what you think I’d get out of it. Whether it’s before or after I put them down, that’s still a crossbow bolt through my chest.”
“You know what I meant!” Doryne snapped.
“I’m not sure she does,” Elissa hissed.
Scarlet kept advancing, the planks creaking under her feet, the bridge gently swaying with each step. “Listen to the simpering lackey,” Scarlet told Doryne, smiling a smile that, under other circumstances, might have been called disarming. “I excel at misunderstanding people.”
“Drop them!” Doryne screamed.
Scarlet sighed again. “Oh, whatever.” With a casual flick of her wrists, she released the children, but with so much effortless strength in the gesture that they went arcing up and away from the bridge in opposite directions, easily clearing the ropes and sailing out into the empty air. Then things started happening very quickly.
Doryne screamed in dismay and released the crossbow bolt. The bolt flew straight and true, burying itself deep in Scarlet’s chest just to the left of her sternum. Scarlet’s eyes flew open wide, then she simply folded in a heap without a sound.
The moment Scarlet had released the children, Tobias’s instincts and combat reflexes short-circuited his brain, taking it out of the equation. Before Scarlet hit the ground, his sword had flashed out, severing one of the supporting ropes of the bridge, freeing the rope to drop loosely into his waiting hand. He released the sword before the arc of the slash had fully completed, allowing the blade to spin away into the forest canopy—because if he’d had even half a heartbeat to spare he’d have spent it looping the rope about his wrist before he jumped.
He didn’t, but his grip held as he caught the falling girl in the crook of his free arm, and it reversed his trajectory. He still fell, but swinging under the bridge when he did, rather than plummeting away from it.
Keely had started to leap toward Addie even before Tobias had, but the same reflexes that had allowed her to get moving first allowed her to notice when Tobias began to move, and to quickly change her own trajectory. Despite her first impulse being to save the child she actually knew, she’d had to trust Tobias to pull off a miracle for the girl, or there’d have been no one even trying to scrounge one up for the boy. Only she possessed the combination of reflexes and proximity to make the attempt thinkable.
In her diminutive form, Keely slipped easily between the ropes and launched gracefully into the air despite the sudden lurch of the planks beneath her feet as Tobias severed the supporting rope and launched himself. In mid-air she melted back into human shape so she’d have the mass to carry the child with her when they collided.
With no rope to grab for, all she could do was angle them toward the least of the available evils, and they crashed together into a stout branch, at least two feet in diameter and less than ten feet down, rather than into the rocky ground at least four times as far away. She managed to twist so that she bore the brunt of the impact, and so that they landed lengthwise along the branch.
It hurt like blazes—cutting bloody scrapes across her bare skin in several places, on top of the blunt force—and she probably would have screamed if she hadn’t had the breath knocked completely out of her, but at least she didn’t hear the sound of any bones snapping.
About the time Keely hit the branch, the full weight of Tobias and Addie came down on the rope, sending a shockwave through the plank bridge that overshadowed the lurch that had come when Tobias first leapt. Doryne was knocked completely off her feet, her crossbow sent sailing after Tobias’s sword.
Most everyone else on the bridge was only saved from going down by having their hands free to grab for the ropes. Only a quick grab from Conrad kept one child from sliding beneath the ropes and over the edge. Tobias’s leather hunting gauntlet kept the rope from tearing his hand open as his weight hit. It didn’t keep his hand from slipping. As Tobias lost his grip, Addie managed a shriek despite the abuse her throat had taken, and they plunged together into the fog, her voice choking off abruptly a moment later.
“Come on,” Conrad said, taking ch
arge of the stunned children while Doryne still lay peering off one side of the bridge—where Tobias and Addie had been—and Elissa stared down off the other, at where Keely lay trying to re-inflate her lungs. “Climb and be quiet. We have to wait out whoever’s listening down there.”
The baying laughter below had never let up. Conrad had nearly led the children to the nearest climbable tree when another tendril lashed out behind them, wrapping around the rope Elissa gripped to support herself, just inches from her hand. The bridge swayed as something tugged from below, but the tendril remained where it was, and Elissa got a good look at one of the tendrils for the first time, even as she backed away with a start. She’d been expecting something along the lines of a slaver’s lash, but what had anchored itself to the bridge was a vine—gray, gnarled, and covered with wicked thorns.
Beginning to backpedal, Elissa nearly tripped over Doryne. That brought Doryne’s attention around in time to see another thorny vine whip up from out of the mist and wrap around a branch above the bridge. Elissa glanced between the vines and Keely, and with an agonized expression began to back away toward the tree the children were climbing.
Even without the thorns sprouting between her and Keely, the gulf between them was clearly something Elissa had no illusions about being able to leap. As Doryne and Elissa watched, the vines began to twist and writhe like snakes, the far ends slowly coiling upward, drawing a single voice up out of the chorus of dreadful laughter with them.
“Well…ow.” Before whatever it was could emerge from the mists, Scarlet’s voice dragged their eyes away to where she sat up, frowning at the bloody crossbow bolt that she’d pulled from her chest. “I told you it was a lose-lose for me,” Scarlet sighed, then rolled casually over into a predatory crouch, like a jungle cat perched high in the trees, ready to pounce.
“Not again,” Elissa whimpered, staring in transfixed horror.
Scarlet’s eyes glinted blood red from beneath the shadow of her hood. For three dreadful heartbeats, Scarlet stared them down—then her gaze flicked to the tree the children had begun to climb.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 40
