A shadow fell over Rosheen and she looked up to see another of the metal beasts looming over her.
There was nowhere to go.
Padric scooped her into his arms, cradling her into his body as the massive iron blade came down. Rosheen’s ears burst with the sound of ringing metal, and she heard Padric cry out. She looked up to see the Unwound’s wrist caught and held firm by another metal hand.
Coltrane.
He grappled the Unwound and threw it, sending it crashing into the one attacking Flyn. Half a dozen more were coming, and Coltrane stepped forward to meet them.
“Brothers,” Coltrane said, “control yourselves.”
The Unwound charged.
“Very well.”
He rushed into their midst, unarmed, catching the first sword stroke and sending his fist through the attacker’s head. Metal screeched as he pulled his hand free, flinging the limp body aside. He sidestepped another slash, clasped his hands together and brought them down, hammering the Unwound into the ground. They surrounded him, their blades whirling, but Coltrane was indomitable. Rosheen could feel the concussion of his fists in her chest as he beat his opponents back. Iron struck iron, again and again with reverberating force. The Unwound were fierce, wild, thoughtless, their swords striking each other. Coltrane laid punishing blows with fist, shoulder and elbow, ripping heads and limbs off with calculated prowess. The six he fought were soon destroyed and others came. A dozen at least. Coltrane fought them all.
Rosheen saw Flyn helping Sir Corc to his feet. She detached herself from Padric’s protective embrace.
“We have to get out of here!” she screamed over the clamor of combat.
“Head for the gate!” Flyn shouted.
“The goblins hold it,” Sir Corc wheezed.
“Not anymore,” Flyn pointed.
The Red Caps came fleeing back into the yard, trying to escape the swinging swords of the horsemen who pursued them. It was a rout, and men and goblins poured into the inner bailey, but the victory cries of the horsemen died in their throats as the Unwound set upon them. The Red Caps rallied themselves, ready to stand beside the Forge Born and slaughter their enemies, but the cheers turned to screams of panic as the living iron tore into them with equal bloodlust.
“We will never make it through that,” Rosheen said.
Coltrane approached, victorious. “I will lead you.”
“Then what are we waiting for?” Bantam Flyn asked.
“You go,” Padric told them. “I must go back to the keep.”
Rosheen whirled on him. “What? Are you mad?”
“Rosh, I have to. Svala and Kederic are there. I cannot leave them.”
“Then I am going with you.”
Padric shook his head. “Go with them. I will follow.”
“Stubborn boy! I am going with you--”
“Wait,” Sir Corc cut in.
Rosheen ignored him. “If you think I am going to let you run off again--”
“WAIT!”
The knight’s growl silenced her. They all turned to Sir Corc.
“Where is Pocket?” he asked, his wound forgotten.
Rosheen looked around. She was startled to find Muckle on his feet. He looked ghastly, leaning on Curdle for support.
“We tried to stop him,” the pale goblin’s voice was full of sorrow.
Backbone stood patiently by, his guide rope dragging the ground.
It called to him. It called to him, and he came. The voice was sweet, coaxing and Pocket trusted it. The girl whispered to him, promising all he had been denied. He deserved his prize. It was time he claimed what was his by rights.
He walked through the yard. Past the Forge Born who still slept, past those that thirsted for the blood of history. They did not harm him. Her voice led him, and he came to the steps of the keep, climbing them slowly.
The husk waited at the top, holding the crown. Pocket stood before him and looked up into the sack face beneath the wide brim of the rumpled hat. The husk spoke, but the voice was that of the girl. And she laughed.
“A half breed! The irony is rare and sweet after nine hundred years. Your ancestors broke the most sacred oaths, sacrificed the most precious gifts in life, all to try and gain dominance over immortals. Now here you stand, the blood of Fae and sorcerer mixed inside of you.”
Pocket heard cries behind him. Familiar voices calling his name. He turned and saw them running, fear on every face. But they were more than faces. He could see all of them now.
The piskie was made of sprouting seeds, drops of dew, gentle puffs of air and brief, tiny sparks; all the hopeful promises of the Elements. The tall, metal man had a heart that still burned and the flames flowed upwards into the iron cavern of his head, a gift given and one not taken away. In the coburn, he saw chained aggression, the links newly forged in the younger, and, in the older, they snapped before his eyes. Such raw emotions, held back with pride and vows. Mirth danced in the dying goblin; the joy of laughter, the pain of ridicule. In the other he saw the crushing burden of truth, made all the more heavy by the kindness that floated deep within the vast pool of knowledge. The black haired man carried a withering belief, a fraying thread between mortals and Faekind. They reached the steps, this group of frail beings. The husk raised the crown above his head, and the girl laughed again.
By the Hallowed! What is wrong with him?
“Pocket!”
She screamed his name as she flew towards the steps of the keep. Her voice was a feeble thing and the boy did not heed it. He stared down at her, the life gone from his face. Next to her, Padric also screamed as he ran, but his entreaties were cast at the husk. The gangly arms held a simple, terrible crown above its head, the featureless face an icon of contempt.
“Fight her!” Padric yelled. “Slouch Hat, damn you, fight her!”
Rosheen could hear the burden in his ragged shouts, rage and impotent guilt.
He knew there was a danger here.
There came the tickling of a girl’s laughter in the air, cruel and tainted with madness. It issued from the husk’s mouth, ringing off the stones of the ancient keep, but Rosheen did not slow her pace. And neither did the others. Even Muckle, bleeding and wan, leaning his bulk on Curdle for support, did not falter.
Coltrane was the first to reach the steps, his iron foot shattering the stonework as he surged upward. The phantom girl found this most amusing and her giggling accompanied the squeal of swiftly bending metal. Coltrane stumbled, catching himself on his powerful hands midway up the stairs. He tried to rise, but his knee joint was twisted and useless. Rosheen heard the sound of a hammer on metal and saw Coltrane racked with spasms as huge dents punched into his body, the violent work of some great, unseen hand. The Forge Born strained against an invisible pressure, his arms shaking as they fought to keep the force at bay. Rosheen winced when the metal warrior’s limbs collapsed and his torso buckled, the iron folding as if cloth. The body tumbled down the stairs, clattering, bent and lifeless. She did stop then and Padric halted next to her, staring wide-eyed at what had been, moments before, an unstoppable being of living iron.
But the coburn did not break stride. Bantam Flyn leapt over Coltrane’s ruined remains, taking the steps two at a time. Sir Corc, injured and snarling, was only a stride behind.
“Witch!” the knight cursed. “Release him!”
“Such bravery,” the girl mocked him. “Such nobility! From little more than an up jumped animal!”
There was a clangor as Flyn’s sword hit the stairs. He spun on Sir Corc, his feathers bristling, head bent and craning forward. A hiss escaped from behind his dripping tongue. Sir Corc had no words to reach the squire, for he too dropped his weapons, descending into brutishness. The coburn circled each other, their movements feral, their faces ugly and reptilian. Flyn pounced first, driving his long spurs into Corc’s body, beating at him with fists and head. They rolled down the stairs in vicious, mindless violence, stabbing with their beaks, leaving a trail of crimson on th
e stones.
Rosheen felt more Magic flood the air as the hobgoblins reached out to the coburn, trying to release them from their barbarity.
“You think to deny me with your hedge-craft?” the girl demanded.
Curdle and Muckle screamed as one, the pale seer grabbing at his skull while the Jester’s wound began spewing smoke and pumping black fluid.
The husk raised the iron circlet higher.
“Hear the voices of the thousands whose lives were claimed by the crown of your former king, Curdle Milkthumb!”
The mystic dropped to his knees, gibbering as blood pumped from his nose, ears and mouth. Muckle had already fallen, the poison in his blood quickened by the crown’s sorcery. He was perfectly still. At the base of the stairs, the thing that had once been Sir Corc rose from the broken form of Bantam Flyn, pulling a foot of dripping spur from the squire’s throat. The triumphant coburn issued a savage cry of dominance to the sky and then sunk down atop his slain foe, his life leaving him from a hundred flowing wounds.
Rosheen turned away from all the death and found herself looking into Padric’s eyes. Ages ago, she had known a life devoid of hardship, bereft of sorrow. Each day was a dance and a song and she, like all her kind, was content to laugh as they feasted. Even after the wars, she found it easy to put the bloodshed behind her, and for centuries she gave not a passing thought to the hatred of those days. And then this boy had been born, grown to a man in a moment, and with no power or Magic, he had enthralled her. Now, she would rather struggle on with him, in toil and misery until the last day of his short life than live herself, immortal and carefree, through the final Age of the world. She knew that now, just as she knew the life of the changeling boy threatened every life on the isle. But there was no evil in Pocket. And she could not give him up to this murderous spirit.
She wished there was another choice.
Padric met her gaze and nodded, crushing her with the choice he had already made.
“I will save him, Rosh.”
He charged up the stairs, over the blood and bodies of their fallen comrades, through the maniacal laughter of the possessed scarecrow. Rosheen flew after him, making for the crown. The iron would destroy her, but she did not care. She would give her beloved boys every chance.
The husk turned as she sped towards him.
A horrible constriction suddenly seized her wings and she fell roughly to the stairs. Straining back she found she was wrapped in spiders’ silk. The strands snapped and slithered over her body, winding themselves around her wrists, pinning her arms behind her.
Padric continued to barrel forward and was only a few steps away from the entranced form of Pocket when he lurched, stopping short and grunting with pain. He snapped his hand to his leg and blood welled between his fingers.
“We freed you,” he growled at the air, taking a limping step upwards. “This is how you would thank us?”
“Boy,” the girl’s voice was biting, “there is only one way to be free of my prison!”
Rosheen struggled uselessly against her bonds and let out a wordless protest as Padric once again stumbled with pain, his shirt and skin splitting from another incorporeal blade. He bled freely, but he continued to climb.
“Then Jerrod masters you still. You remain his puppet.”
Slouch Hat’s jaw gaped wide as the girl screamed with fury. Padric’s cry of agony overpowered her rage as his skin erupted with dozens of red cuts. He fell to his knees, his clothes sodden with his own blood, but still he reached for Pocket.
“I pitied you,” Padric said with a quivering voice, but Rosheen could see the set of his jaw and knew his grin remained steady, defiant. “But now I see your place will forever be his servant. His plaything.”
The girl did not answer. She had ceased laughing. There was silence.
Padric took Pocket’s hand in his own.
Rosheen recoiled as something sprayed heavily across her face, forcing her eyes shut. The liquid was hot and she tasted copper as it dripped into her mouth. She shook her head roughly, clearing her vision. Her mouth dropped open at what she saw, but no sound came forth. Padric clutched desperately at his ruptured throat, his fingers grasping feebly at the thick life’s blood pumping between them. He fell forward, choking and his head came to rest on the stair where Rosheen lay, bound by webs and frozen by horror. They looked at each other and her world shrunk to his face, struggling in an ever deepening pool of red. The apology stayed in his eyes even after the life fled them.
The blood spread across the stair towards her. She let it come, waiting for her own death. But the grief would not kill her. No matter how much she wished it.
He watched them all die. All except the piskie, who now lay trapped and forgotten. He had known her. Her, and the rest. But they were nothing. They were not his purpose. He turned back towards the husk and once again it spoke with the voice of a girl.
“Kneel.”
He did as she commanded.
“How fitting that I may have my freedom as I take my vengeance. Receive your birthright, seed of Jerrod. Receive it and die!”
The husk lowered the crown on his head.
Excruciating pain lanced hotly through his skull. He felt his brain begin to boil. The girl shrieked with the rapture of liberation and was gone, her voice fleeing his head and replaced with perfect agony.
Pocket reached up and tried to remove the crown, finding it fused to his sizzling flesh. His fingers blistered as they touched the iron, desperate to pry it free, teeth clenched so tightly he felt them cracking. Visions assailed him. Dead kings and their atrocities; the line from which he was descended. Blood and Fire. Rapine and slavery. Degradation and death.
Blood and bile rose in his throat, and he retched, spilling his guts on the stones as the crown poisoned him. He looked and saw his friends lying on the steps, dead and dying, tormented by madness. They had come to save him! He who was the product of a deceitful union. The issue of tyrants. A changeling! A gurg! An unwanted curse on the mortal world and with no place in the realm of the Fae.
Weak, thin fingers grabbed at him.
“I am sorry,” an odd, reedy voice said. “I am sorry.”
He caught a glimpse of the husk through seeping eyes and felt the fingers move to his head, prying at the crown. Pocket jerked away, causing a bolt of fell energy to slam into to the husk. It flew away and crashed into the door of the keep. Pocket had not wanted to harm him, but he could not allow the crown to be removed. Through the pain there was power and while his Fae blood burned, his mortal blood fused with the legacy of lost domination. His will would be absolute, even as his body fell to ruin.
He could feel them dying. His friends. The men in the yard and the goblins too. The Unwound crushing them into pulp. It was not what he wanted. It must stop!
And at his command the Forge Born slept. He led them back to the oblivion of mindlessness. No will, no bloodlust. Nothing. And they obeyed.
The crown fought his desires, screaming voices chastised him, and he felt the hot flow of blood spilling out his ears. He screamed, silencing the voices, forcing them to listen.
He mended Flyn’s body, his first true friend. The squire’s chest rose and fell, his breath restored. Pocket then returned the life of the one who had given him his; the knight that he worshiped and loved. He chased the voices from Curdle’s mind, restoring his peace and purged the venom from Muckle’s veins. Next, he repaired the form of the last true Forge Born, recognizing the necessity of his existence. He closed the throat of the man he did not know, for Rosheen loved him, and she had given Pocket so much.
They were his friends.
They had smiled with him, laughed with him, shared meals and stories. It was more than he ever thought he would have, and if he must give his own life to save theirs, he would give it.
He would give it gladly.
Padric sucked in air. He coughed and sputtered. The memory of choking on his own blood, unable to breathe, the feeling of his severed windpipe in
his fingers, both still hung in his mind. He tried to rise, but his legs were quivering and useless. He looked over and saw Rosheen flying in weak sputters up the stairs, her eyes wide and staring.
“Pocket?” her voice broke.
Padric crawled up and saw Slouch Hat lying slack and motionless. Next to him was the small, crumpled form of the boy. The older coburn limped up the stairs, his eyes lost, searching for any other sight. He fell to his knees next to the boy and gathered him up in his arms, rocking back and forth. With a shaking hand he removed the iron crown from the small, scorched head and dropped it to the stones, brushing at the boy’s hair and looking into his still face. They all came up and surrounded the fallen child. The child who had saved them all. The knight clutched the limp body to his chest and threw his head back, shattering their hearts with his lament.
TWENTY SIX
Deglan washed his hands in the bronze basin, drying them on a well-used cloth as he stepped out of the field tent. The morning was wet and grey, the air refreshing after the close smells of wounded men. Barely thirty of Orvin’s warriors had survived Castle Gaunt, and most of those were men lucky enough to take their wounds on the bridge battling the Red Caps. Of the riders who entered the castle, only two still lived, and Deglan could not say what injuries their minds had sustained.
The cairns for those who fell on the bridge were just outside the camp, raised with stones brought from the fields. The poor fools who died in the castle yard would molder where they lay. No one was willing to reenter that cursed place to retrieve them.
Deglan rubbed wearily at his eyes, grateful he had saved the ones he could. He ambled through the camp. There were more horses and grooms now than fighting men. A yawn snuck out, and Deglan considered doing the sensible thing and resting for a while, but ended up walking out of camp towards the castle bridge. He found Coltrane standing sentry as he knew he would. The Forge Born had not moved from the base of the bridge since emerging from the castle the day before. This morning, Curdle stood with him.
The Exiled Heir (Autumn's Fall Saga) Page 48
