The Banshee's walk m-5

by Frank Tuttle

  I wished for the thousandth time I’d kept my grip on the fallen sorcerer’s staff. Lady Werewilk might have been able to use it somehow. More importantly, if might have eventually told me who was paying the black-clad wand-wavers.

  But I’d dropped it somewhere back in the forest a mile away and it might as well have been on the Moon. Neither Buttercup nor I was in any shape to think about trotting back for it.

  I was far more worried about the diminutive banshee than myself. She was truly struggling. Her last banshee skip-hop had left her quivering and gasping, and we’d traveled just a few steps.

  They’d been enough. But I wasn’t going to let her do that again, even if it meant facing down angry men in the dark.

  I waited until the half-dozen men a dozen feet from us stomped away, grumbling and batting at low limbs. Then I caught Buttercup up and began to carry her.

  She mewled protest at first, but then looped her arms around my neck and put her head on my shoulder and went fast asleep.

  I navigated by guesswork and assumption. It’s a minor miracle I didn’t walk full into the Frontier that very night. But somehow I found the old road, and somehow I dodged the ragged patrols along it, and by the time the eastern sky was showing the very first blush of dawn I’d found the ring of trees and the secret door to the Werewilk tunnels.

  The door was undisturbed. I’d left a couple of twigs propped against the opening. They were still there. I threw caution to the wind, mainly because I heard a pair of very distinct male voices nearby, and I stuck my head inside for a quick look.

  No one knocked it off. I lay on my side and slid and wiggled onto the top of the stairs, and then I caught Buttercup’s still form by her arms and I dragged her beneath the earth as well.

  She mumbled, but didn’t waken.

  I took her quickly to the bottom of the stairs. I had nothing to put under her, except my ragged shirt, and given its state of scent and dampness it didn’t seem to be worth the time. In the end, I laid her down on the wet ground and promised her I’d hurry.

  I hurried back up the stairs, and spent another eternity lowering the steel trap door, sure that the creaks and groans were drawing the attention of every surviving miscreant in the neighboring eighty miles. I swore if I survived I’d come back here and grease the damned works myself.

  Finally, it closed. I sat there, my ear pressed to the damp steel, listening, but I never heard voices or footfalls.

  We’d made it.

  I sagged. Every bruise and cut and burn and welt fell upon me at once. My legs were pillars of aches. My head pounded. My ears still rang. I was thirsty enough to actually consider licking the cricket-covered walls.

  But we were alive, my Buttercup and I.

  I had to force myself to get off my butt and march down those stairs. “Keep moving,” I said aloud. “You stop now you’ll never get back up.”

  Buttercup stirred when I spoke, but still didn’t wake. Her tiny hands moved, though, fluttering and grasping, as though searching for something in her sleep.

  For the first time, it dawned on me that I was bringing a living, breathing banshee into the world.

  I pondered that, while I got a fresh torch lit. Rannit wasn’t any place for any folk that even had the faintest hint of Fae in their features.

  All Buttercup needed was a pair of dainty wings, and she could pass for a sprite or a dale elf.

  I stooped and scooped her up. She was limp, like a basket of rags, and that was a good estimate of her weight.

  “What am I going to do with you, Buttercup?” I asked. My voice echoed in the shadows.

  It was a long way back to the House. I’d spend most of it crawling. My poor sleepy banshee was about to be literally dragged through the mud.

  “First thing we do is bathe,” I noted. Buttercup wrinkled her tiny nose.

  I sighed and cussed and set out. The fat black crickets watched me go.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Buttercup slept through the whole wretched journey. I wasn’t so lucky.

  I was nearly exhausted to the point of just sleeping where I lay myself, despite the cold mud. Instead I set a steady rhythm-push the torch ahead. Crawl back. Grab Buttercup’s wrists. Drag her forward. Crawl back to the torch. Push it ahead.

  And repeat, over and over and over.

  If the first time through the collapsed portion of the tunnel had taken hours, this one took lifetimes. But somehow, we made it.

  I found an old blanket in a chest and wrapped the banshee in it, since the rest of the tunnel would allow me to stand and carry her. Still, she showed no sign of waking, despite being dragged and held and carried.

  I hoped she wasn’t injured in some way I couldn’t see. There was no way for me to know what a good dose of that blue light might have done to her.

  I pressed on. I nearly fell myself a time or two, just from carelessness and fatigue.

  I was nearly to the stairs below the kitchen when I came to Gertriss.

  She too was fast asleep, seated in a wooden chair, a sword across her lap. She was snoring, lightly and daintily.

  I shifted Buttercup, checked her face. She was still in the grip of a deep slumber. For the first time I was glad-I wasn’t sure of a lot of things, but I was sure I lacked the strength to wrestle with a panicked banshee no matter how small her stature.

  I covered Buttercup’s face with a fold of the blanket, just in case.

  “No napping during office hours,” I said. I kept my voice low. Gertriss didn’t stir.

  I nudged her right foot with mine.

  Her eyes flew open.

  “Easy,” I said, quickly. “No loud voices, no sudden moves. I brought company.”

  Gertriss stood. Her sword clattered to the damp ground. I cringed, but Buttercup didn’t stir.

  “I thought you were dead, Mr. Markhat,” she whispered. “What have you got? Is that a child? Is she hurt?”

  “Me? Dead? I hardly ever get killed these days, Miss. And this is Buttercup. She’s probably older than all of us added together. And as for hurt, I don’t know-I think she’s just exhausted. We had quite a night.”

  I shut up. Gertriss wasn’t listening. She’d pulled back a bit of blanket, and was getting her first good look at the not-quite-so-mythical banshee.

  “Well I’ll be damned.”

  “Miss, you’ll never get invited to any of the best society teas, talking like that.” I was ready to drop. “Think you can carry her upstairs? I’m spent.”

  Gertriss lifted the blanket a little higher and went wide-eyed. “Mister Markhat-she’s starkers!”

  “I’m going to go broke buying up wardrobes for naked women,” I said. My arms were beginning to shake. Hell, all of me was. “Burlap was the best I could do.”

  Gertriss took Buttercup from me. Still, the banshee slept, not even stirring.

  “Where are we going to put her? What’s she going to do when she wakes up?”

  “Put her in my room. Can you get upstairs without raising half the House?”

  Gertriss snorted in derision. “Nobody but the cooks stirring. Laziest bunch I’ve ever seen.”

  We both started walking for the stairs. I could see light from above. Gertriss had left the trap door open. As we neared, clanging and clanking and voices sounded from the kitchen.

  “Seems they had a party last night,” I said.

  Gertriss nodded. “That was my idea. Keep that lot in the woods looking at the House. Was trying to give you a distraction.”

  I managed a grin. “It worked. Remind me to give you a raise.”

  We halted at the bottom of the stairs. I looked up them. My legs begged me to sit down for a year or two and rest.

  “Up we go,” I said. I could smell bacon, hear it sizzle and pop, smell strong hot coffee brewing. “Remember, if anyone asks, Buttercup here is our secret love-child.”

  Gertriss laughed, gently arranged the cloth so that Buttercup was covered, and we ascended wearily into the light.

  We m
ade it up to my room without raising a single eyebrow. Oh, the pair of cooks gave us a good sideways glare as we sidled around the cook-stove and I happened to snatch up a couple of biscuits and a handful of bacon to keep them warm, but neither of them spoke a word to us. Not even when I liberated a pitcher of clean water and a chunk of salted ham.

  The House beyond the kitchen was quiet. Even the ever-present dogs, that lay slumbering three to a couch, did no more than glance our way as we passed.

  I pondered that. I know they smelled Buttercup, who possessed the kind of body odor only lifelong non-bathers could achieve.

  But they didn’t react.

  Probably because they were accustomed to her presence.

  Once I closed the door behind me, I crossed to the big cushioned chair and collapsed down into it. Gertriss laid Buttercup out on the settee, kneeled on the floor beside her and fixed me in a piercing Hog stare.

  “That was mean of you, sneaking off like that.”

  I munched biscuit, gulped water.

  “Had to. Two bodies would have been spotted.”

  The word she gave in response was not a word which Mama would approve.

  “So what happened? What did you see?”

  I laid it out between bites. The soldiers, the sorcerers, the excavation, Buttercup, the face in the sky. All of it.

  I had hoped it would make sense, when I laid it out. It didn’t.

  What the Hell had I seen?

  “We saw the flash and heard the thunder,” said Gertriss. “Rather, they saw the flash, and we heard the thunder. I was in the tunnel, convinced my boss was dead.”

  I groaned inwardly, knowing I’d never hear the last of that particular jibe.

  Buttercup shifted in her sleep. Gertriss watched her for a moment, then wrinkled her nose in disgust.

  “I hate to say this, Mister Markhat, but if we’re going to keep her indoors she’s going to have to have a bath. Soon. Now.”

  I nodded. The food and drink was settling in. I was fatigued, but not quite ready to collapse anymore.

  “Might be easier while she’s asleep.” I hated to do things that way, but Gertriss was right-we’d never be able to keep her hidden when a blind man could smell her from thirty feet away.

  “I’ll go get bathrobe and some soap,” said Gertriss. “Lots and lots of soap. Why don’t you start a warm bath.”

  I rose. “You handle her by yourself?”

  “I think you’ve seen enough naked females for one night, Mister Markhat. You can sit right outside the door. And you come in only if I holler-call, understood?”

  “Understood.” I got my aching feet out of my boots and padded back toward the fancy hot running water and the iron bathtub.

  Marlo showed up, grumpy and glaring, before I finished filling the tub. I hauled Buttercup back to my bedroom and laid her on the floor and shut that door behind me before I let Marlo in my room.

  The first thing he did was scrunch up his nose. “Damn, what have you been rolling in, Finder?”

  “Trouble. Is that coffee for me?”

  He handed me the cup and frowned. “You ought to have told the Lady you was back.”

  I gulped it down, burning my tongue in the process.

  “I figured word would get around. Anyway, as you pointed out, I need a bath. We’ll talk after that.”

  “What’d you find, out there? Anything?”

  “Too much. A couple of hundred men, I figure. Wagons. Horses. Wand-wavers. Oh, and something came up out of the hole they were digging and blasted a fair-sized chunk of the Lady’s timber flat.”

  He just nodded, like that sort of thing went on all the time out here in the wholesome country air.

  “I reckon they’re still watching the roads.”

  “I reckon they are.”

  “So what you gonna do about that, Finder?”

  “Me? I’m going to change clothes and eat some more ham. And if people will let me think, I’ll do that too. In the meantime, everyone needs to stay indoors.”

  “Horses and goats and cows got to be fed.”

  “Not by me they don’t. Thanks for the coffee. Tell the Lady I’ll be downstairs shortly. Until then, nobody so much as sticks their nose outside, got it?”

  “Skin left at first light to tend his bees. Ain’t seen him since.”

  I was tired.

  “Better find another bee-keeper.”

  He snorted and stomped off. I slumped down onto the couch and seared the rest of my throat with the coffee.

  Gertriss returned as I swallowed the last drop. She was clad in a dressing gown she’d probably found in her closet, because Darla would never have given her anything that much too small.

  She bore an armful of towels and cloths and bottles. Judging from the number of soaps and shampoos and perfumes, I decided Gertriss was going to try and introduce poor Buttercup to the entire gamut of female make-up in one frantic go.

  She saw my lifted eyebrow.

  “Oh, hush. I won’t do anything to the poor creature she doesn’t want done.”

  “Considering it’s entirely possible she’s lived her life in the forest without ever seeing a bathtub, that’s a potentially dangerous statement to make.”

  Gertriss shook her head. “She’s tiny and maybe she’s not entirely human, Mr. Markhat, but I think she knows what a house and a bath is, from somewhere, even if it was a long time ago.”

  “You’re the one with Sight, Miss. I’ll take your word for it.”

  Gertriss sorted through her stack and pulled out a pair of dark pants and a plain white blouse and a few unmentionables. She put them on my couch.

  “I’ll need those when I’m done,” she said. She shot a look toward the closed bedroom door. “Is the bath ready?”

  “Ready and waiting. You sure you don’t want me there? Or maybe Serris, one of the female staff?”

  She shook her head. “They’d gawk and stare and treat her like a monster or an Elf. She may be wild, boss, but she’s not stupid. She’d sense it. And I don’t think she’d like it.”

  I rose. “Look. Modesty is well and good. But we don’t know what she’s capable of. So if she wakes up, and trouble starts, you yell, you understand? I’ll fight with one eye closed and the other pointed at the ceiling.”

  She grinned. “I will. Here goes.”

  “Good luck. Don’t look her in the eye.”

  “It’s a bath, boss. How hard can this be?”

  A quarter of an hour passed. I changed my filthy clothes for fresh ones and wiped off the worst of the filth with a wet face cloth. Gertriss assured me through the door that all was well.

  I wasted a few minutes trying to peer outside through the thick window glass. I could tell it was daylight, and see smudges of green, but an army flanked by parades of leaping clowns could be down there and I’d not have seen a thing.

  The windows were meant to swing inward so archers could open them and fire through them. These windows would swing no more, though-the hinges were gone, replaced with a solid and thoroughly immobile peacetime window-frame.

  Which left us with no way to lob unpleasantness down on miscreants in the yard. Or to even see miscreants. The thick glass would stop the bolt from all but a siege piece, but now that none of them would open we were half-blind and helpless.

  I heard a splash. Gertriss murmured, her voice soft and soothing. I knocked gently on the door.

  “She stirred a bit, boss, that’s all. Still asleep.”

  “You almost done?”

  “Getting there. You’ll be able to raise tulips in this bathwater. Her dirt has dirt.”

  I didn’t reply. I’d hoped Buttercup would sleep through being bathed and dressed. Now I was beginning to wonder if the little creature would ever wake up.

  Had she caught the edge of a spell I couldn’t see, out there in the woods? I had no idea what else that wand-waver’s globe could do, other than emit sticky blue light. Had he had time to rattle of a spell before his head met the first of many tree
-trunks?

  I didn’t think so. But with wand-wavers, it was never safe to make assumptions.

  More splashing. Gertriss assured me again all was well.

  And why was Buttercup here, anyway?

  Was she really a banshee?

  Sure, she was able to do those strange little hop-skips and howl. But she’d howled when Serris had tried to jump, and Serris was alive.

  She’d not howled when the wand-waver died. That seemed a bit un-banshee-ish. The legends claimed banshees could sense death, and the lore was adamant that when a banshee howled, death was at hand.

  Maybe all those old legends were exactly the sort of bunk I’d thought from the beginning.

  Which, if true, meant I knew exactly nothing about banshees or Buttercup.

  Music started up downstairs. Music and hooting and stomping. The artists were at it again, right after breakfast, while the woods ran thick with hidden soldiers bent on errands which might include mayhem and slaughter.

  I shook my head, more envious than angry.

  I heard another splash, from behind the door.

  And then tiny Buttercup awoke.

  The banshee howled. She didn’t give it her usual slow buildup-no, she went from silence to ear-splitting shriek all at once.

  I went deaf. I clamped my hands over my ears.

  And then the cry went silent. My ears rang, but I could still hear a sort of burbling whistle, muffled and lent a gurgling quality as though it were being issued from under a body of water.

  Gertriss cried out. I hit the door.

  Gertriss had Buttercup’s face submerged in the tub. The tiny banshee clawed at her with arms and legs alike. Gertriss held on, but was clearly losing her grip on the tiny creature’s wet, slippery body.

  I rushed to the tub. “Blanket blanket blanket,” shouted Gertriss. I saw a nice thick blanket laid out on a vanity and grabbed it, and had almost managed to fling it over Buttercup when she freed herself from Gertriss’s grasp and launched herself from the tub in a wide, tall fountain of hot soapy water.