by Brandon Barr
He’d see to her last breath if it was the last thing he did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Payetta knelt behind a bramble on the meadow’s edge, hemmed in by Justen, Ian and Old Ferren. She had departed almost entirely from her body, keeping only a meager foothold on herself which was under close watch by her three protectors.
The two forms she was devoting most of her attention to scampered along in the dark toward a pair of raiders stalking toward a lone farmer hobbling from a battle wound to his calf. These two forms were the wolverine and She Grunts, the latter of which was chirping softly in anticipation of an imminent pungent release. In the dark, the animals were all but undetectable, allowing her to creep very near the raiders unseen.
The farmer backed away, waving a sword as he stumbled in retreat. Payetta brought She Grunts to the heels of the two raiders while keeping the wolverine an arms length back.
The two ugly brutes were almost upon the hapless farmer when she loosed a snarl from the wolverine’s throat. The two raiders turned at the noise and her skunk reared its tail, then grunted out a quick, well-aimed burst above the men’s shoulders. The potent brew shot straight into their faces. Payetta sprung with the wolverine as the men shouted in shock, wiping the backs of their hands at the blinding sulfuric liquid.
She went for the balls of the first man with a vicious twist that brought him screaming to his knees, then leapt at his throat with her teeth and claws for a quick strike before dashing to safety. The farmer seized upon the opportunity, driving his hayfork into the first man he came upon, then made a merciful end of the second man who lay slumped on the ground, throat opened and pants bloodied.
A bolt of lightning lit the clouds above as Payetta focused on the other animals under her sway and the chaos they were causing before the gate of Hargstead. Her head spun as she watched through a hundred pairs of beady little eyes that comprised her vicious, miniature army.
Back at Honey Hideout, when she brought her small cadre of animals against Titannus and his men, she had managed to keep control over each individual creature, but not so here at South Meadow. It was easy enough to have them follow her and move in unison as she had on the march to South Meadow, but the energy it took to calculate individual maneuvers, avoid and run, jump, attack, and bite—it had gone beyond her ability to handle with so many bodies under her limited mind.
Instead, she found that if she only drew back using her Eartheye and retook those creatures running in fright, she could turn their fear into fury and send them scurrying back up a raider’s foot. The trick lasted long enough for her to keep up with those fleeing and those she sent back to attack.
“How goes the battle?” came a husky voice into her mind. The rich timbre was intimately familiar. It was Justen’s sexy baritone.
Payetta withdrew just enough from the fight to whisper, “We’re winning. Tell Old Ferren I deballed a man with a wolverine.”
Just then a tall, muscled figure passed by on the battlefront before She Grunts. The man’s sword slashed out at an incredible speed, sending a raider’s sword arm flying through the air, and seconds later the head came spinning after. As the large fighter spun back around, she saw it was Daeken, his jaw set hard, eyes searching for his next fight.
Justen’s voice returned, “Ferren says to stay away from his nether regions, but he gives you his blessings to deball as many of the Raiders as you please.”
Ferren’s voice grated in her mind, “Tell her she’s a sick puppy though! Don’t leave that part out!”
Another flash of lightning lit the sky and thunder cracked overhead.
Through the eyes of She Grunts, Payetta noticed a commotion at the gate of Hargstead. The raiders had fallen back against the gate, their numbers vastly diminished. Payetta counted close to ninety when the attack began, but now the number was closer to forty.
But where were the other hundred men out of the two hundred she’d seen arrive at South Meadow only days before? Half his army had not been present when the attack began that night.
She sent She Grunts and the wolverine trotting towards the mass of raiders huddled together before the gate. Many of them hopped and twirled as they slapped at the little creatures still swarming about them. She’d lost over half of the field creatures to the quick hand of a raider, the little mice and shrews had taken on the heaviest losses, while the bats had faced the brunt of the casualties with only two remaining in the air. The farmers advanced slowly on the men, led by Daeken and the members of the Heroes Brigade who’d aided in the assault: Jax, Dane, Flinn, Brodie, and Kinwick.
She paused in relief at the sight of each of them. She wasn’t sure how she would react to another friend dying under her care, and she was satisfied for now that she didn’t have to find out.
Something behind the eighteen raiders stirred from within the Hargstead gate. Four more raiders rushed out carrying another man on a crude wooden frame. Her eyes zeroed in on the unmistakable face of the man lying on his back, his flowing white hair dangling down over the side of the makeshift gurney.
Payetta’s heart leapt.
It was Titannus.
***
Payetta’s legs thrashed through a field of lettuce, the rain drenching her in sheets.
Had Titannus been injured? Killed? Either way, she now had a single goal. To reach him and pierce his heart with her sword then remove his mind-probing head from his thick neck.
Then and only then would she know he was dead.
Running through the field using her own eyes was not as easy as the excellent night vision she’d enjoyed through the eyes of her animals. The starless sky and the blur of heavy rain made every step a treacherous one.
A stone caught her foot and she fell face first into the mud. A hand grabbed her by the arm and pulled her up. Justen’s darkened eyes scanned her quickly for injuries as Ian stood beside him, panting slightly. She spat and wiped at her face
“Let’s not keep the mage waiting,” cried Justen over the roar of the rain, then pulled Payetta back into a run. “Can you still see him?”
Payetta tasted dirt in her mouth and spat again. “He’s moving south away from Hargstead! But the men carrying him are moving slow. We can catch the bastard!”
Justen shouted back, “How many are with him?”
“The four carrying him and six others who broke off from the main group at the gate.”
“We’re going to need help,” Justen replied.
Payetta rolled her eyes. Not this again. Having more men would be ideal, but she didn’t dare risk letting Titannus slip away. Besides, the demand for help grated inside her. She recalled Daeken’s admonition back at the hideout, and now, to hear it come from the mouth of her husband was inexplicably annoying.
“Help is out of our way!” shouted Payetta. “We might lose him if we cut toward Hargstead.”
“Ferren will never catch up,” came Ian’s voice. “It’ll just be the three of us.”
“Trust me,” replied Payetta, “I’ll find some nasty little friends to join us on the way.”
“What about Hargstead?” questioned Ian. “Have we regained the village?”
Payetta grimaced. She still had a light grip over a few surviving animals by the gate, but her plan there had gone to piss. When the fight had first begun, the men and women of Hargstead had flooded out, some joining the fight while others fled for their lives. The town had been abandoned and the forty or so raiders still alive had taken advantage of the open gate.
“The raiders have shut themselves inside,” she called back to Ian. “Not that it’ll do them much good. We have them pinned now. If we kill Titannus, then the raiders in Hargstead are trapped. But there’s another hundred that weren’t accounted for tonight. I suspect that’s where Titannus and his men are headed. He must have sent an army south to finish clearing out South Meadow.”
“If that’s the case,” replied Justen, “We’ll need to hit Hargstead fast before reinforcements come. It’s the difference
between facing forty and one hundred and forty.”
“Exactly,” retorted Payetta. “And if we have Titannus’s head on a spike with his blood-stained hair flowing in the wind like a warning flag, they might think twice about attacking at all.”
“I don’t know where you come up with this shit,” shouted Ian. “But it’s brilliant.”
Justen groaned loudly. “Brilliant? Really, Ian?”
“Justen’s right,” yelled Payetta. “I’d reserve the word brilliant for loftier things. Like rainbows or Justen’s orgasmic lovemaking.”
Ian snorted. “If only I could perform like you, Justen. My poor Matilda doesn’t know what she’s missing.”
“Trust me,” blared Justen, his tone flat with annoyance, “I could be asleep and my wife would have an orgasmic time of me. She’s as arousable as an entire warren of feral rabbits.”
Payetta smiled at the sound of Ian’s laughter. She squinted through the rain, noticing a long dark line cut into the edge of a field. “Get ready to jump!” she shouted. Running up to the line, she sprang over a narrow irrigation channel that was nearly overflowing with water.
A cottage loomed ahead like a ghost in the dark. Payetta whisked around the side of it, her boots splashing through deep puddles beneath the eaves. Hargstead was now behind them, and, far off to their right, was the Grey Road running south, but Titannus’s entourage had not taken it, choosing a little farm path that angled southeast. Titannus and the ten men accompanying him were not far off now, and she searched out with her Eartheye for animal allies.
To her surprise, she sensed the presence of a man or woman closing in on them. She turned her head and saw the bleak outline of a figure through the rain.
“Hold!” she yelled out. “Someone’s coming.”
Justen and Ian halted beside her, breathing hard. She realized just how exhausted she was, out of breath herself and mentally spent. The creatures back at Hargstead were sitting idly by, and She Grunts and the wolverine were perched on the body of a dead raider, waiting for her command. With the fight over and the remaining raiders holed up in Hargstead, it was time she released the animals. She needed all her strength here and now.
As she let go of what was left of her army, the fatigue clouding her mind eased a little. She stood watchful of the approaching figure, her Eartheye seizing upon new creatures near her position. A large weasel living under a shed, a number of mice, a crimson winged owl in its nest at the top of a cherry tree.
She summoned the animals as Justen and Ian came up on either side of Payetta, demonstrating to the lone stranger that he or she would have to go through them to get to Payetta. She drew her sword as the mysterious figure came to a stop five feet away.
The stranger stood, face hidden in the rim of a cloak, then he knelt. “I was so wrong,” cried a ragged voice that rang with a note of hysteria. “I should have listened to you. Forgive me!”
A long tongued bolt of lightning flashed in the sky and lit the man’s shadowed face. And in that flash, Payetta recognized the man before her
It was Percy, Captain of the Meadow Guard.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Percy looked out at Payetta, Justen, and Ian in terror. He had no control over his body. Even his eyes were under Titannus’s spell. It was a horrifying sensation being only an observer in his own body, shackled to the will of a mage who directed his every move.
The sight of Payetta stirred up ugly emotions in Percy, but those feelings were now suspect. Titannus had revealed things about her as he’d spoken to Mayor Brundig and the two meadow guards at the gate. Things Percy hadn’t known about her.
Namely, that she was a mage.
The question now was—did that change the way he felt about her?
She’d always been such a cocky bitch to him, but then, as much as he hated to admit it, she’d been right about the attack on the Meadowlands. And furthermore, if she was a mage, her and Justen’s stories about taking on groups of raiders might actually be true.
Suddenly, the mage’s cold voice echoed within Percy’s thoughts. “You don’t want to die for that foul woman, do you, Percy?”
Percy trembled at the voice, afraid to answer.
“I promise, if you cooperate with me, I won’t kill you when this is through. Instead, I’ll see to it that you have a position of power far greater than the one you hold in this pathetic farmland.”
Percy was surprised at the offer, but unnerved by his own reaction to it. He would have expected himself to recoil at such a proposal, but instead, he found himself entertaining it. The threat of death, he realized, was a powerful tool for persuasion.
But what of his honor? What of his morals?
“Percy,” called Titannus’s voice, much warmer now, “what you call morals and honor are relative to your tiny vantage point here in the Meadowlands. I see your courage and intelligence—you deserve much bigger honor than you could ever receive here in this tiny farm community. Instead of leading a few dozen men, you could be leading hundreds, perhaps more. We could use a mind like yours heading our ranks.
“And as far as morals go,” Titannus chuckled. “Yours, at least, are not as skewed as that young woman Payetta. Help me defeat her, and I swear, you will be richly rewarded.”
***
Payetta glared at Percy, the equivalent of a long itchy hair stuck in her asscrack. Percy peered up at her from where he knelt, the whites of his eyes the only thing visible beneath his hood. The seemingly earnest apology Percy had uttered still rang in her ears, but she was in no mood to address it in length.
“You’ve been a jackass, Percy,” shouted Payetta, “but I forgive you. Now help us, we could use your sword! We’re after Titannus!”
Percy came quickly to his feet. “Yes! The mage is badly hurt. I was following him in hopes of bringing back a report of where they had taken him, but then I lost my way in this damned storm.”
“Come on,” Payetta growled, “he’s near. They’ve stopped inside a farmhouse.”
She started south again, searching for animals as she stormed toward the injured mage. A half-starved mare was locked in a barn. A large sow rooted in the mud inside its pen along with five goats. She seized the goats and attempted to jump the fence, but it was too high.
She would have to do with the wild animals for now. She had the weasel and the owl and had found more mice to join. Then she sensed a large concentration of tiny insects in the attic of the farmhouse where Titannus and his men had stopped.
As she probed the little insects, she realized what she’d found. A smirk thinned her lips. It was a hive of bees.
The farmhouse materialized out of the rain like a ghostly monolith rising from the flat earth. Everything was dark and drenched, as Payetta slowed her pace, every footstep sloshed in a thick ooze of water and soil. The door to the house swung open and one after another, eight men stepped out, swords drawn. Payetta did a quick count. That left two raiders inside the house with Titannus.
“We’re outnumbered,” called Percy. “They’ll take us in pairs and cut us down.”
It warmed Payetta’s soul to hear the tremble of fear in Percy’s voice. “The Meadow Guard has lots to learn from the Heroes Brigade. Ready Ian?”
“Always,” he replied. “Let’s show the Captain what we can do.”
She patted Justen’s ass with a slight grope. “Ready?”
He patted her ass back. “Ready.”
Payetta led the way, Ian and Justen on either side. The frightened Meadow Guard captain followed hesitantly behind them.
“I don’t understand,” called Percy, his whiny voice cutting through the pounding rain. “This is suicide.”
“Watch,” shouted Payetta. The owl sprang from the top of the farmhouse, performing a tight circle high up, then swooped down. The raider didn’t see the large bird until it crashed full force into his face, the dagger like talons gripping the sides of his cheeks for a hold as the beak pecked through the right eye. The man crumpled backwards in a heap.
“It’s the mage!” shouted a raider. “Kill her first!”
Payetta stepped back in surprise as the seven remaining men charged her.
She sent the mice scampering from the sopping ground onto the men’s leggings. A hum sounded from above as the bees swarmed down upon the men from a hole in the wood siding. The heavy downpour disoriented the little insects, but their sheer numbers were enough that over half the hive reached the raiders before they were beaten down by the rain.
With the chaos caused by the mice and the bees, the men lost most of their focus on Payetta, waving their arms at the bees and beating their bodies to squash the mice.
Payetta rushed forward, closing the distance that remained and leapt upon the first man she saw. His sword twisted out, parrying her blow. He stumbled back, cursing her as he regained his footing. A dozen wet, angry bees crawled on his face. She was impressed with his ability to concentrate on her, even as the bees stung him and mice bit his legs.
The raider let out a cry—whether of pain or rage or both—she couldn’t tell, and his sword slashed hungrily at her neck. She ducked and smacked his strike away with the flat of her blade. He reared back for another wild blow when she sent the weasel leaping onto his back.
The man screamed as the claws dug through his cloak. She drove forward with her legs and slashed low, her sword tip opening his thigh to the bone. He fell face forward into the mud and she finished him with a precise thrust into his back. A quick glance around showed only four men remained of the eight, and of the four, all were struggling to fight with the bees and mice stinging and biting their flesh.
Justen and Ian had three men between them while Percy fended off the fourth. Payetta turned toward the farmhouse door. Two men stood there, blocking her path to Titannus.
Lightning flashed, and she saw their wide eyes full of fear as she charged toward them. In the flash of light, she’d also seen a pair of large rose bushes on either side of the stone entryway. Seizing control of the plant, she brought the sturdy thin roots out and tied them around their boots. With a yank, she brought the man on her left off balance, and he fell into the bush with a cry. She quickly wrapped him in the bushes thorny embrace and a howl of terror sounded from the plant as the man thrashed and screamed. The raider on the right had reacted fast to the root as it wrapped around his foot, cutting it with a swing of his sword before she could pull him down, and now he fled into the darkness of the house.
