The horses kicked up the stale dust of ages as they cantered ahead, the sound of their hoofs a steady hollow backdrop in the wide tunnel.
"I didn't know horse carriages did this sort of thing," Isobel said as she repositioned herself.
"A boulder is blocking the rails a few miles down, there since the storms. Our train, the Magpie, and her crew will be waiting on the other side to take us to central Moredea. I have been assured that these fine horses will deliver us safely. Isn't that right, Vin?" Beatrice said with a backward glanced at the Admiral.
Admiral Vin tipped his midnight blue derby in reply and stared straight ahead, reigns held loosely in his gloved hand.
"Central Moredea. Is that where I was born?"
"Yes. We are members of the Order of the Septa. That's how I came to know your mother. We fought many battles for the order together after the great storms."
"Who'd you fight?" Isobel asked, remembering Elder Bardo's stories from the night before.
"Mostly the neighboring nations who sought refuge within our borders after the storms. We were stronger and our power supply hadn't been entirely destroyed, unlike most of the other territories. We shut our borders and watched them starve. The livestock fell first. Then the women and children. Strong, virile men who had fought alongside us during earlier campaigns, wasted away to nothing before our eyes. Those were not our proudest moments. The sun now warms the Moredean soil. Too late for those fallen souls," she said softly.
"I've never really seen the sun."
"No one in Landgraevan has."
Heavy shadows fell along the uneven concrete platforms jutting from the wall of the tunnel, shifted long ago by the force of the great storms.
"When's the last time a train ran through here?"
"Over two hundred years ago, before Landgraevan, when it was known as Eandera. It was a time before hologram canopies and imprintings, a time of verdant hills and blue streams and few wars." She played with the ruby ring on her finger, the red stone glowing under the warm light of the coach lantern. She carried with her the scent of leather and tweed and hay.
"Elder Bardo mentioned something about the wars yesterday," Isobel said, and her breath caught with the thought of Montgomery.
"There was a time before the storms when the tribes of this land were united in peace. They worked together for the good of the soil they shared, honoring nature as their deity. When Moredea sent an emissary to explore these unknown lands west of the Pythean, the tribes welcomed him into their home. They gave him food and shelter and land to call his own. It was a gift from the goddesses, they said. And he repaid them with genocide. The few that survived are the tunnel rats of today."
Isobel took a steadying breath. "I killed the Rat King," she said, and pulled the dagger out from under the blanket, placing it on her lap.
Beatrice stared at the bloody dagger. "That is the weapon you used?" she asked evenly.
Isobel toyed with the tip of the dagger, her eyes downcast, and followed the blade to the pommel, drawn to the glowing crystal at the hilt. Flicking the dried blood clinging to the surface of the crystal, she replied, "Yes."
"There are those who would wish to take that dagger from you," Beatrice said.
"Like the Rat Queen?" Isobel asked.
Beatrice's response was cut off by Admiral Vin's sharp whistle.
Turning they found him gesturing to the rear of the carriage. "Ladies, we have some unexpected company just down the rails," the Admiral shouted, snapping the reigns.
The horses picked up speed, lather glistening on their bodies, ears pinned back, nostrils flared, billowing breath fogging the air. Admiral Vin snapped the reigns again and the horses charged ahead, faster still.
Isobel and Beatrice stood up and leaned over the side of the carriage to look in the direction Admiral Vin was pointing. Tunnel rats, twenty strong, were gaining on them, grunting fiercely with every powerful lunge. Isobel turned to Ash growling, baring his teeth, and she saw, in disbelief, a tunnel rat slip an arm around Beatrice as she faced her.
Beatrice calmly withdrew the elegant mahogany handled dirk she carried at her side and with a rapid backward motion slid the blade into the belly of the tunnel rat. She turned, fluid as a dance move, the blade still buried to the hilt, and kicked the twitching rat body onto the rails, pulling the blade out with a practiced tug. She held up a handful of white braids she'd managed to shear off the rat, scalp attached, fist tight and pumped into the air. "May we be victorious," her voice called clearly, loudly, throwing the braids overboard as she scanned the large coach.
"Vin needs my help. Stay here with Ash," Beatrice said, nodding to the Admiral who was fighting off a tunnel rat along the driver's perch. Not waiting for an answer, she climbed over the back of the coach, and moving with the grace of a dancer, lowered her dirk as she snuck up behind the rat. With one deft movement, she inserted the blade into the base if the rat's cranium, at just the right angle, and the beast fell into a heap on the carriage floor without a fight.
Admiral Vin leaned into the driver's perch, a red stain growing around his shoulder, and regaining control of the reigns, he pushed the team faster. The horses charged, biting at the bit, frothing at the mouth, manes flowing behind them like waves of liquid pewter. Removing Admiral Vin's jacket, Beatrice tore a strip of fabric from his shirt tails, tying it around his bleeding arm as more rats attacked, forcing her to take up the offensive, guarding his back.
Ash protected starboard, chest thrust forward like a great white lion. He stared ahead, focused forward, and barely caught the abrupt movement from the corner of his eye. The rat lunged at him, tackling him broadside. Isobel stepped forward to help, dagger in hand, but a slight rustling to her rear caught her attention. She pivoted on her booted heels and faced the tunnel rat staring her down from behind.
The rat glanced from the extended dagger to Isobel, judging the right angle to attack her, and tackled her from underneath.
She sidestepped his attack and he quickly recovered his footing, turning to face her again. The rat grabbed her by the arm, held it bent behind her back, his breath assaulting her in putrid tiny gusts as he hissed into her ear. "You are the mystic my queen seeks. She no longer cares how you arrive, dead or alive, only that the dagger is returned," he said, and with his other arm wrapped around her head like a vice, went to snap her neck.
If she resisted, she'd be dead. So Isobel moved with his arm as long as she could, and just as her feet lifted off the ground, her neck stretching beyond normal anatomy, the rat was violently wrenched away.
Isobel stumbled forward and turned as an immense white beast dragged the hissing rat to the facing side of the coach. The beast quickly straddled the rat, holding him down with ease, his pumped up forearms, purple veined and bulging under taught furless skin, overwhelming the rat. The apoplectic rat raged, spewing spittle and profanity, arms flailing, black claws trying to make contact, until finally, the beast growled back, deafening the rat into silence. Then with a motion which seemed almost intimate, the beast nuzzled his muzzle into the rats neck, killing him with one swift bite. He pulled up, neck flesh and tendons hanging, and looked at Isobel, arteries squirting blood from his snarling teeth.
The beast jumped off of the dead rat, quickly closing the space between him and Isobel, growling softly, a rich baritone growl, like a lion, marbled saliva dangling from his jaws. He took a step in her direction, and then another, forcing her deeper into the seat of the carriage, one menacing step at a time.
She pressed her cheek against the diamond tufted seat as the beast raised himself up, his black claws ripping into the plush velvet cushions. He sniffed her clavicle, her ear, her hair, and nestled his gray muzzle under the curve of her jaw, against her jugular, and it smelled of blood and sweat and bile. Isobel cringed at the hard fee
l of his teeth on her neck, and as he nuzzled deeper, nipping her skin, intimately, she thrust the dagger up into his underbelly.
He tensed under her hand and the dagger slid to the hilt. The beast pulled away, pushing against the seat and, with confusion clouding his honey amber eyes, he faltered and fell forward.
Isobel heard Beatrice call her name, but it sounded distant to her from under the dead weight of the animal. She needed air, but the beast wouldn't budge. She pushed and shimmied, the dagger pressing painfully into her thigh, until finally, she squeezed out from under him.
Beatrice gently lifted the prostrate animal and held him in her arms before laying him on the floor of the coach. Kneeling beside him, she searched his dense gray fur and located the wound on his belly. She shoved her fingers into the wound to stave the blood flow, but her efforts were in vain, and she pulled away, turning to Admiral Vin with an expression of crushing defeat.
Isobel dropped the dagger and fell to her knees. "No, oh no, don't, please don't," she uttered weakly, pressing the heels of her palms into the wounds at Ash's side, and blood flooded the indent of her hand. "This can't be," she whispered, raising her blood soaked hands in confusion, staring at Beatrice imploringly. She looked back at Ash and settled over him lightly, like a gossamer blanket, and rested her cheek on his chest, listening to his tight, shallow breathing, to the gurgling of internal hemorrhaging, to the slowing of his heart. She stroked his silky fur, the way she always did, over his head, around the mounds of his ears, to his neck, the way he liked it.
Beatrice placed a hand on her shoulder, but the consolatory act, intended to comfort her, made Isobel feel desperate. It was a sort of premature condolence, as if to say there was nothing she could do. She recoiled from the woman's touch with an expression of insane grief.
"I stabbed him. I didn't know what he was. I didn't know," she whispered hoarsely.
"I'm to fault. I didn't have time to tell you," Beatrice said softly. The profound loss was hers as well. She'd whelped Ash and trained him herself, and for this rarest of all shape shifters to die such an untimely death, killed by the very one he'd been born to protect, was a tragedy.
Isobel cradled Ash's head, her hand trembling as she stroked his brow, her voice catching as she whispered for him to hang on. He whined once in reply, quietly, nearly inaudibly, and then, with a light death rattle, he was gone, the dearest of amber eyes gone void.
"No. No. No. Don't," she faltered, her vision darkening, sucking he in as she fell onto him.
Beatrice called to her, pulling her back, but Isobel had no desire to return, so she just fell deeper, and the last thing she heard was her own heart beat cease.
"Come, child, there is nothing you can do," Beatrice said, lifting her off of the dead dog.
Isobel slumped into Beatrice's arms, her hooded sea green eyes glazed over in death, her torso stained red.
Beatrice carefully raised Isobel's shirt and found a deep wound just below her rib cage, the exact spot Ash had suffered his. She drew Isobel into her arms and held the broken girl against her chest, petting her hair with blood covered hands, and closed her eyes as she allowed herself a moment of mourning. "Cadence, I have failed you," she moaned, burying her face in Isobel's hair, inhaling the familiar scent of her.
Isobel's eyes fluttered open and she gazed at Beatrice quizzically, wondering why the woman was holding her. She bolted upright, coughing a spray of crimson spittle through the air, startling the woman.
Beatrice, released her, and hand to chest, exhaled on a deep, shaky breath.
"What happened?" Isobel croaked, clenching her side. Remembering Ash, she crawled over to him, drawing him into her. She closed the lids of his eyes with her blood crusted fingers, murmuring into his velvety ear.
"Isobel. You're injured," Beatrice said, crouching to comfort her. She placed a hand on the young woman's shoulder and they both heard the faintest rustling coming from the dead dog at the same time.
Isobel struggled to a sitting position as she watched his eyes flutter open, the honey amber gaze filled with life again, a faint heart beating under her hand real and getting stronger. She searched for the wound and found a fat, puckered scar, completely healed as if it had been made some years before.
Then she noticed the growing bloodstain soaking her front. Lifting her shirt over her belly she studied the deep wound and paused, her expression quizzical.
"I don't get, how did I, how did Ash, how did?" she asked, and fell onto Ash again as she spiraled into deep unconsciousness.
Chapter Eleven
Emergent, Book One : Isobel Page 20
