“No!” Doryne screamed, launching herself forward at the same moment Scarlet leapt. Doryne caught Scarlet in mid leap, arms locking around her waist in a full tackle that sent both women tumbling together over the security ropes and down toward the forest floor.
That left Elissa standing alone on the narrow bridge when a skull rose up out of the mists, laughing like a deranged jester fit for entertaining in Jane Carver’s torture chamber. Twin points of light glowed in the darkness of its sockets, the same blood red as the glint from Scarlet’s eyes. Where a neck would once have supported the skull, an array of stout, thorny vines sprouted, coiling about like tentacles and pulling the skull through the trees like it was some sort of macabre arboreal octopus.
Elissa stood transfixed for a moment, the glow from the eye-sockets drawing her gaze almost hypnotically. Then she turned and fled, stumbling over her own feet as the bridge swayed erratically beneath her. Blind panic took her past Conrad and the tree full of children without even seeing them. Conrad spun to face the onrushing…thing…meeting it with sword drawn and a desperate battle cry. One thorny vine lashed out from the thing, drawing a stinging trail of blood across his face before he countered with a furious swing that severed the vine.
Elissa yelped in pain and surprise as one of the other flailing vines caught up with her, wrapping around her unprotected ankle and pulling her unsteady feet out from under her. Desperately she gripped the planks, fighting against being yanked toward the thing, while Conrad grappled with the remaining vines. He managed to lop off a second and third before one finally caught a solid grip on his sword arm and forced him to drop the blade.
Back the way they’d come, Elissa could just make out Ulric and Evadne headed quickly their way through the mist, but not nearly so quickly as she seemed to be losing her grip on the planks. Then Conrad’s sword clattered to a stop beside her. She gave up her grip and made a lunge for the sword, just managing to snatch it up as the vine hauled her into the air. Gripping the weapon in both hands, she swung out blindly. Once. Twice. Three times. The thing let out an ear-splitting shriek just before she felt the sword slip from her hands again.
Then Elissa found herself in free-fall for one sickening moment, only to be snatched up in another thorny embrace that pinned one arm to her chest. Up above her hung the bridge, a good twenty feet away. The spot where she’d just been could be easily picked out by the pair of vines there still flailing spasmodically about.
Not two yards from her face, though, another skull hung in the air, suspended from the vines it sprouted. The skull’s decrepit jaw snapped at Elissa even as another of its vines snared her free arm, and another grabbed one of her helplessly kicking feet. She couldn’t suppress a scream as a fourth snaked about her neck, then tightened, gouging her flesh and choking off any hope of sound or breath.
Her world shrank to the hideous sound of the thing’s laughter and the bloody light in its eyes. Then just as she was sure she would black out completely, another skull came arcing in out of nowhere to smash with a bone-shattering crunch into the skull holding her. The vines uncoiled, and she fell all of five feet before landing in Tobias’s arms.
“There!” Tobias pointed as he eased her down onto the branch he was standing on, but Elissa couldn’t look. She was too busy gasping for breath. Rather than allow her time to recover, Tobias wound up half-dragging Elissa down the limb to the trunk of the tree, then helped her wedge herself into a large crevice where the ancient tree had gnarled itself into a shape that offered some minimum of shelter. “I’ll be back for you,” he assured her before heading out.
By the time Elissa’s head had stopped spinning, she had become gradually aware that she was sharing the space with Addie, who was wedged even further back into the crevice and whimpering quietly, arms clutched in a death grip around Elissa’s waist.
Though badly scratched and well-bloodied, Tobias remained otherwise intact. The worst of what he’d suffered was pain, and more than once in his life he’d managed to block out considerably worse and keep right on moving. While he remained mindful of the terrible things happening around him, something inside him sang along with the rhythm of his pounding heart. He was in his element, and he still had a damsel to rescue—or at least a rather attractive con-artist who would eventually, but inevitably, be replaced with a damsel in someone’s retelling of the story. That seemed close enough to tradition to work for him.
Like Elissa, when he’d fallen, he’d found himself snatched out of the air by one of these abominations. Unlike Elissa, he’d been prepared to deal with it. Even without his sword, he’d had a dagger in easy reach. It couldn’t slice through vines nearly so neatly as a sword, but it had bought him the chance to slip out of the thing’s grasp and onto a sturdy branch along with the girl. After that, well, the skull-things had proven their own worst enemies.
When another vine lashed at him from out of the fog, Tobias stood his ground and raised his gauntlet, allowing the thing to snare his wrist. Then he promptly spun in place, whipping the vine in a violent arc that evoked a shriek of protest. The move also threw off the aim of the next vine that came whipping drunkenly at him, and Tobias managed to parry it with the same gauntleted wrist, quickly twining the two vines together like the start of a braid. He took one more moment to be sure of his footing on the broad tree-branch, then spun back the other direction, slamming the skull-thing into a tree trunk.
However unnerving and ghoulish the things might be, however nasty their grip, they could not be mistaken for tactical geniuses. Certainly it had never occurred to them that someone might choose to take the skull by the thorns. Given a moment to realize what was happening, they could anchor themselves fast in place. Denied that moment, well…
Tobias cracked the whip, snapping the hapless skull at the end upward, where it wound dizzyingly around a branch in a spiral that inevitably led to bone cracking once more into tree. Then he kept a firm hold on the vines as he leapt from his own branch, using the vines to swing to the tree where Keely had landed. Once he’d quickly tied them off to make sure that the stunned thing would have no easy time recovering, he scrambled up through the branches to reach Keely.
The boy she’d kept from falling was cowering against the trunk of the tree, too small to reach a handhold for the next branch up. Tobias boosted him, and the boy scrambled gratefully away. There would be no perfect cover from what they were facing, but downward lay disaster and upward lay allies. It was the best Tobias could do for the lad at that moment.
Keely, for her part, was finally beginning to push herself unsteadily upright, and the sight frankly took his breath away. This was hardly the first time he’d glimpsed her without her clothes on, but she’d never seemed more vulnerable than at as this moment, nor more primal and wild, and to stay alive in this scuffle he had already handed over authority to his base emotions.
For that one instant, the cultured, chivalrous prince vanished, and only the sure knowledge that they were all still fighting for their lives kept the animal inside from trying to outdo the moment he and Keely had already stolen together in the rain outside the mausoleum. Grinding his teeth, he tore his gaze away on the pretext of scanning the trees for more threats, even as he extended a hand to help Keely up.
“Did we win?” Keely asked unsteadily as she brushed back the wild tangle of hair that had fallen into her eyes.
“Both children are alive and whole, just terrified. It’s not over, though. You need to get moving. Perhaps as a cat?” he suggested. “I’m, uh…not sure whether your clothes are up on the bridge or scattered through the trees at this point.”
Keely nodded in response, leaning on a hand for support while she attempted to chase the wool from her head. After a few moments she gave a muttered expletive, then sighed heavily. “Not sure whether I’m just too scatterbrained still or I’ve burned myself out. I don’t think I’ve ever switched back and forth so much so quickly.”
“I should have known you’d land on your feet, your highn
ess,” Conrad said as quietly as he could manage, while still feeling confident he could be heard over the maniacal baying of the rest of the things below them. He had leaned out from the bridge above, but now leaned back, respectfully finding other directions to look, much like Tobias had, on spying Keely’s current state of dress. He’d managed to retrieve his sword, and held it firmly at the ready. “What about the others?”
“Our scholar and the girl I caught live, if a bit banged up,” Tobias said, finally thinking to strip his tunic off over his head and pass it to Keely. “Keely seems unbroken, and the boy…” Tobias nodded toward the climbing child.
“I’ll find a way to get him to the others,” Conrad said. “Dame Evadne’s with them, and Sir Ulric’s gone to see how quietly he can get the others caught up with us so we won’t have to split ourselves guarding everyone. Did you see what became of Lady Doryne and the witch?”
Tobias shook his head. “Did they fall, too?”
Conrad nodded.
“I’ll have a look after I get the others up here. In the meantime, make sure everyone knows what we’re up against with these deadlings,” Tobias said.
“You mean these…skull things?” Conrad asked.
“That’s what I said.” Tobias nodded firmly. “Deadlings.” It was the first name that he could come up with. Tobias knew that his grasp of the finer human motivations and emotions could come up short, but fear he understood. If he seemed fearless to the world, it was only because he’d devoted so much of his life to understanding, channeling, and controlling fear. Fear killed. At its best, it incited unpredictable panic that could get you out of a scrape where all other hope had failed, but in a fight, that was just rolling dice with your life.
The man who consistently survived and overcame was the man who kept his head, and nothing instilled fear and paranoia like being stalked by a nameless foe. They weren’t getting those children out of this forest alive without giving these things a name first. “They seem to be relentless, but nearly mindless.”
By the time Tobias had turned back to Keely, she had pulled his tunic on. It could have used a belt on her, but otherwise made for a very serviceable dress. She wasn’t making any apologies for studying his bare chest. “A girl could get used to this kind of chivalry.” She grinned.
Tobias chuckled. “Can you climb? I need to…” A girlish shriek from the direction he’d just come cut him off. He gave Keely a quick, questioning glance, and she just shoved him lightly away.
“Go!” she demanded.
Tobias went, hopping lightly down the branches to where he’d left the deadling’s vines tied off. They remained that way, and the thing hadn’t managed to unwind its skull from around the branch, but it did thoughtfully find a spare vine to lash out at him with. Again, he let it grab his wrist and used the vine to launch himself back across the gap between trees.
He was already in the air before he spied the flash of red from Scarlet’s cloak, where she came clawing her way up the tree toward Addie and Elissa. The woman’s movements were halting and uncertain, as if several of her bones had been cracked and joints dislocated, yet she made surprisingly good progress all the same.
It wasn’t good enough to get out of the way when Tobias’s boot connected with her jaw. The astounding part was that even though it snapped Scarlet’s head back precipitously, the impact did nothing to loosen her hold on the branch, and she didn’t go flying. She just swung her head back and grinned unnervingly at Tobias as he landed agilely a few feet away.
“Now this is living,” Scarlet sighed wistfully as she pulled herself up onto the branch and shoved a dislocated shoulder back into place with an audible pop. “I haven’t had this much fun in ages.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Down to Goblin Town
Addie shrieked again. Elissa already had the girl out of the crack they’d been wedged into and was hustling her higher as fast as they could manage.
Tobias did some quick mental estimates of the amount of force Scarlet had managed to exert even in her current state to keep herself firmly anchored to the tree branch. He cross-referenced that with the velocity that the inquisitrix must have hit the outside of the cabin at Caer Cacamwri for the impact to have turned her into the mess she’d wound up as, factored in Scarlet’s apparently complete obliviousness to pain, factored in the landing she’d been able to crawl away from, and observed the sinuous movements of two more deadlings emerging from the fog as they homed in on Addie’s shriek.
It all added up to this being no time for one nearly unarmed man to press his luck trying to capitalize on Scarlet’s injuries. Grinding his teeth in frustration, Tobias bypassed Scarlet by leaping to the next branch, then hurried to join Elissa and Addie. “Up!” He hissed at them. “Up!”
“Down!” Keely insisted, dropping onto the branch beside him. “Down!”
“How did you…?” Tobias began.
“I was very motivated,” she said, pointing up and away toward where he’d left her. No less than a dozen of the deadlings swarmed through the trees there, headed this direction. “We’re cut off, and ‘up’ has stopped helping. Worst case if we take to the ground is that we’re drawing the pack away from the others.”
“What about Scarlet?!” Elissa demanded.
“I get the feeling Scarlet can take care of herself,” Keely said. “Move!” She ran out along the branch, beckoning the others to follow. Tobias urged Elissa after Keely, then scooped Addie up and carried her. The fog no longer obscured the ground from here, and a fall didn’t look like it would be deadly; but it was sure to be painful, and would invite broken bones that—under the circumstances—would bring death along as part of their entourage.
At last Keely spied what appeared to be a thoroughly muddy, rock-free patch of ground passing beneath them, and quickly rolled down to dangle from the branch, getting her feet a full body-length closer to it before letting go. Making a quick exit had always been easiest for her as a cat, but she’d had the wits to never count on being able to do it that way, so she was able to roll neatly into the mud now as she landed. She came up a total mess, but otherwise no worse for the fall.
“Addie!” Keely beckoned, and held out her arms. Tobias, who was still carrying the girl, didn’t leave a moment for Addie to protest or freeze up. With the deadlings closing in behind them, that would have been a moment they didn’t have. He just dropped flat on the branch and let her dangle from his extended arm long enough to break the momentum.
“Let go now,” he hissed, “or they catch us all.”
Elissa added her steady gaze to his, looking Addie in the eye, and said one word. “Faith.”
Addie let go of Tobias’s wrist, and dropped into Keely’s waiting arms. What resulted was no heroic catch. Keely didn’t even try to stand firm, just to divert the force of the fall into a tumble that sent her sprawling together with Addie back deep into the mud.
“Your turn,” Tobias said, taking Elissa’s arm and swinging her down while he held on as tightly as he could to a fork in the branch. “Protect your head,” he ordered her. “Knees bent. You don’t have to stay on your feet. Just twist to the side.”
Elissa nodded. She fell. She created a rather spectacular splatter of mud, but she did climb back to her feet under her own power.
As Tobias fell himself, he felt a thorned vine graze the top of his head, closing just an eye-blink too late on the space where he’d been. Elissa and Addie were off and running before he had grabbed Keely’s proffered hand and let her help him to his feet. The next vine lashed out while they were still in the middle of that maneuver, and Keely let out a yelp of pain as the thorns dug into her unprotected wrist, binding it fast to Tobias’s gauntlet.
Tobias cursed himself mentally for allowing this to happen. Unable to lash the deadling about while his arm was bound to Keely’s, he fumbled with his off hand to draw dagger and slash at the vine. He couldn’t manage the leverage to severe the thing with a stroke this time, and before he could try a second
, Keely let out another yelp. The deadling had snapped a vine around her ankle and yanked her feet out from under her. She hung suspended upside down for a moment, his tunic falling toward her shoulders in a manner he deeply regretted lacking the circumstance to enjoy.
Then as he redoubled his efforts to hack through the vine, Keely screwed up her face in intense concentration. The little white cat fell completely out of his tunic and scrambled desperately away through the mud. With the first vine nearly hacked through anyway, the sudden disappearance of Keely’s arm from its grip allowed Tobias to yank his own arm free and to follow close on her tail.
He didn’t waste the moment grabbing for his tunic, or even for a glance back over his shoulder. He just shifted the dagger to his good hand and ran. The deadling would already be recovering for its next strike, and with another ten or so coming up fast behind it, that didn’t leave many options beyond “get out of its reach” or “die”.
Ahead of him, Addie shrieked again, and Tobias found the reserves to push just a little harder, catching up with the others.
“No no no no no,” Addie was whimpering, staring in shock at the sight of Doryne’s broken body sprawled in a still-spreading pool of blood on the rocky outcropping where she’d landed—final confirmation that the young woman had given her life in defense of these children. Before Tobias could finish closing the distance between them, Elissa had scooped up the unresisting Addie and began carrying her along, but Tobias finally did risk a moment to look around.
With the body for a reference point to where they’d fallen from the bridge above, he was able to quickly spot the metallic glint of his sword, lying in the mud nearby. With a dive and a roll to evade the crack of another whip-like vine, he came up within reach of the blade and hefted it as he spun to face the next attack.
Lethal Red Riding Hood (Dark Goddess Chronicles Book 1) Page 41
