by Marmell, Ari
The others gathered in the chamber hadn't even finished their gasps of astonishment when the pistol ignited with a deafening crack, and not even Iruoch was fast enough to avoid the shot.
The ball tumbled through the creature's filth-matted coat, through the flesh and bone of the shoulder beyond, and fell with a dull thump to the carpet in the hallway. A cloud of cinnamon-hued dust puffed from the wound and drifted to the floor in a flurry of flakes—flakes that resembled nothing so much as blood long dried to near powder. The ball, fresh and new when it was fired, was coated in years' worth of corrosion.
Ghostly children wailed in a chorus of pain, and Iruoch's face was a mask of utter astonishment. His jaw and cheeks flickered as those peculiar muscles—or whatever they were—twitched and flexed beneath the skin.
“Ow!” He really and truly looked as though his feelings had been hurt as much as his flesh. “That was—”
Widdershins kicked, and a small shard of broken glass from the carafe arced across the room—again, with impossible, unnatural accuracy—slicing for Iruoch's throat. He raised an arm fast enough to shatter the missile; several strips of shredded coat and skin dangled from wrist to elbow.
“That was—” he started again.
The flintlock—which Widdershins had hurled less than a heartbeat after kicking the glass—careened off his forehead, sending him staggering.
“That was—”
Widdershins lunged forward with a piercing cry and skewered the creature with Paschal's rapier, literally pinning him to the door.
“Quit it!” he shrieked at her. His breath was a waft of waste and blood, like the feces of an incontinent vampire. It punched through the miasma of peppermint that surrounded him, making Widdershins gag.
Gag, but not fall back. Grunting, she twisted the rapier, widening the wound. More dried blood—or whatever the dust in Iruoch's veins might be—sifted out across his boots, and hers.
“Would you just die?!” She heard the murderous hysteria in her voice, and a part of her welcomed it.
“Hmm…” Iruoch cocked his head aside and actually tapped one of those horrific fingers against his chin. And then, “Nah!”
Eight fingers clenched tight, wrapping and rewrapping themselves around Widdershins's wrist until it was encased in two or three layers of flexed digits. She felt his skin searing her own, felt it pierce the fabric and stick fast to her flesh, and she couldn't repress a shudder.
Slowly, methodically, Iruoch straightened his arms, pushing her back. The blade slid obscenely from his body, the once-pristine steel now rusted and pitted.
She'd hurt him—she knew she'd hurt him! She saw the pain in his clenched jaw, the wince as the sword slid free. But even as she watched, that agony faded. The small stream of dust pouring from his chest stuttered and stopped as the wound…
The ragged edge of the wound shaped itself into a mass of tiny fingers that slowly interleaved with and clenched one another, stitching the injury closed. And the gashes on his arm, the hole in his shoulder, already gone.
Yes, she'd hurt him. But not nearly, not nearly enough.
“You're a really good dancer,” Iruoch told her with a manic grin. “But it's my turn to lead, now.”
Iruoch's fingers flexed—not his shoulders, not his arms, but the fingers alone—and Widdershins hurtled back across the room, bowling over Constable Sorelle and Brother Ferrand in her flight. They fetched up against the desk with a painful clatter, a roiling heap of limbs and fabric and badly bruised flesh. Blood smeared the carpet around Widdershins's wrists, where the creature's touch had once again peeled layers of skin from her flesh, but she scarcely noticed the pain. Her ears filled with the sounds of desperate combat as someone fired off a second shot, as swords and bludgeons leapt from scabbards, as those still standing converged on the monster in their midst—but this, too, she was aware of only peripherally, as something happening at a great remove, lacking any immediacy.
Around her, cocooning her, insulating her from the world around her, was a despair so thick it was tangible; a despair partly her own and partly Olgun's, though she couldn't begin to guess where one left off and the other began.
Everything. She—they—had hit Iruoch with absolutely everything they had, everything they could muster. And he'd laughed it off. Oh, she'd made her mark, made him bleed to the extent that he could bleed, but nothing more.
She felt the weight around her shift as one of the men with whom she'd collided—she neither knew nor cared which—hauled himself up and to his feet. She was now free to move, and so she did, rolling over and curling into a tight ball, face pressed to the leg of the bishop's desk. As the earlier rage had seemed to come from beyond, to belong to someone else, so too did the hopelessness nipping and gnawing on the edges of her soul. For a moment, Widdershins—who had watched the slaughter of two dozen of her fellow worshippers, who'd lost the two people closest to her barely six months ago, who had faced not only betrayal but a literal demon without giving up—Widdershins surrendered. Eyes squeezed tight against both sight and tears, she abandoned the world to do as it would. To do with her as it would.
But only for a moment.
It wasn't the peculiar music of combat that dragged her back, kicking and screaming, to herself. It wasn't the cackles and nonsense rhymes of the creature she so hated, nor the grunts and groans of pain from her allies—not even when she recognized, with a faint spark of concern, Julien's voice among them.
It was, in his own way, Olgun. It was always Olgun.
It was Olgun's acquiescence; the sense of resigned despondency that flowed through her, merging with and augmenting her own. She'd given up—and so had he.
He could not fight without her, no longer had it in himself to try. If Widdershins surrendered, so did Olgun.
And she knew, as she pried her eyelids open and dragged herself to her feet, that she couldn't do that to him.
The scene before her was just about as awful as she could have expected. Julien was slumped against the wreckage of one of the bookcases, half-covered in fallen texts and tomes, struggling to pick himself up. Blood drenched the left half of his tunic and had even soaked through his tabard, though Widdershins couldn't clearly see the injury itself. Brother Ferrand held the bishop's staff of office and was jabbing it as a makeshift spear, but proved unable to get close enough to do any good. Paschal, who no longer had a rapier and whose injured arm would have prevented him from using it to full effect if he did, was struggling desperately to stay out of everyone's way while he fumbled through reloading his flintlock. The Church guard—Martin, was it?—hung limp from the wall beside the door, where he'd been pinned with his own broken halberd. Portions of his face hung in tattered ribbons: a blotch of carnage that was a near-perfect match to one of Iruoch's inhuman hands.
Iruoch himself crouched on the very edge of the table, a position that should have sent the furniture toppling, but of course did nothing of the sort. He lashed out in all directions, turning his head at impossible angles to keep a watch on every one of his opponents, but they had learned—though too late for some—to stay well beyond his reach. The phantom children giggled, and Iruoch himself was chanting, “Monks and soldiers, thieves and priests! Toys and games and snacks and feasts!”
All this she absorbed in an instant. What took her longer to grasp was what the two priests were doing—and, more importantly, the implications.
Sicard and Igraine both stood perhaps seven or eight feet from their enemy; he by the desk, not far from Widdershins herself, she near the portraits, opposite where Julien had fallen. Both stood with their holy icons raised, reciting prayers and paeans to the gods of the Hallowed Pact. Sicard's emphasized Vercoule, of course, while Igraine's were devoted mostly to the Shrouded God, but both were broad enough to encompass other divinities as well.
And they were working! This was no magic as Widdershins understood it; she saw no flashes of light, felt no power such as when Olgun worked his miracles through her. But Iruoch cringed
and flinched from them as they spoke, turning his squinting face away.
That, then, brought back to mind the sights she'd failed to absorb earlier: Iruoch's abbreviated steps, his apparent discomfort upon entering the chamber. “It's the church,” she whispered to Olgun, her voice shaking from all that had happened, all she'd seen. “Gods, that stupid rhyme was right!”
No mortals, magics, blades, or flames; He only fears the Sacred Names.
Maybe the unnatural aura of this unholy creature of the fae was enough to make even gods recoil in discomfort, but the same was true in reverse. That was why he'd focused on Widdershins and Olgun, why he'd taunted her specifically with his murder of the young nobles. They alone, among all he'd encountered, were…Well, a threat if they were lucky, but at least an irritant.
So maybe, if the two priests could just hold him for long enough…
As if mocking her for daring to plan, to hope, Iruoch chose that moment to act. He leapt from atop the table, flipping around so that his feet connected with the ceiling. There he hung, if only briefly, his coat still falling from his shoulders to his ankles in defiance of all natural laws. His spidery fingers closed on the nearest chair and tossed it across the room with brutal force. Sicard grunted, wood splintered, and the bishop fell, bleeding from an ugly gash across his forehead.
A second flip and Iruoch stood upon the carpet, stalking with stiff but inexorable steps toward Igraine. Apparently, whatever power the priests might have held over him together could not be maintained by one alone. The Finder began to sweat, and her voice grew louder, but the creature would not slow.
“Ready, Olgun?”
The god's reply, a muffled surge of doubt and hesitation, was not precisely reassuring. Nevertheless, Widdershins felt the familiar not-quite itch of his power flowing through her, suffusing her, brightening the air around her. One deep breath, to steady herself; a second, since the first was rather less effectual than she'd hoped; and Widdershins lunged.
No weapon in hand, no blade or even bludgeon held before her, she crashed into Iruoch as though catapulted, only steps away from Igraine. Guided by Olgun's touch, she struck, again and again, her hands a blur. She punched, bare-handed, at the creature's head; jabbed stiffened fingers into the soft spots at his throat, under his jaw, under his ribs, even at his eyes. Her intent wasn't to kill, not even to cripple. Widdershins was no brawler, and though she'd survived more than one fistfight in her time, she wouldn't have known how to render such blows fatal even if she'd tried. No, her goal was diversion. Her goal was pain.
Her goal was to strike Iruoch with every iota of power Olgun could give her, counting on the touch of his divinity itself to accomplish what blades of steel and balls of lead could not.
And to a degree, it worked! With every blow, Olgun's power swelled through her, overwhelming the faint burn Widdershins felt with even the briefest contact against Iruoch's skin. He flinched from every punch, every jab, every slap, crying out as he had not done even when shot through the shoulder or skewered through the chest. For the first time, he truly appeared uncertain of what to do, of how to react to the not quite mortal, not quite divine assault.
She couldn't take the time to plan her next attack, or even to think at all. All sense of technique was gone, all grace abandoned. She struck, again and again and again, a blur of violence, not daring to let up for so much as a heartbeat. Someone was yelling Julien's and Igraine's names, ordering them to get everyone else out, and Widdershins never realized it was she herself who shouted. She could only hope that the sound of shattering glass and feet tramping on wood—presumably the desk—meant that they were, indeed, making their escape through what had previously been the bishop's courtyard window.
Still she pounded on the creature she hated more than anything else in the world, until her hands were numb, her knuckles bleeding, her fingernails ragged. Had she been able to continue thus for minutes more, it's possible she might have done Iruoch permanent damage.
But she couldn't. Not even Olgun's influence could grant Widdershins the level of endurance she'd need to beat this murderous faerie to death. Gradually but inevitably, she slowed; her strikes coming less frequently, less powerfully. It was only a little, but it was more than enough.
Iruoch screamed, a primal sound bereft of meaning, and hurled Widdershins off him with both hands. She felt a brief sensation of freedom, until her flight was rather rudely—and quite abruptly—interrupted by the ceiling. She groaned, coughing up a dollop of blood-tinted spittle, and then a second, larger mouthful as she slammed back to the floor.
Some few paces away, Iruoch was rising to his feet, and whatever sense of humor (however cruel and twisted) normally occupied a portion of his expression was utterly absent. His eyes were impossibly, inhumanly wide; his teeth ground together with such impossible force that they visibly twisted and swayed in bloody sockets.
“Time to go somewhere else, yes?” Widdershins mumbled. The swell of agreement from Olgun was almost strong enough to lift her off the carpet under its own power.
“Oh, good. I'd hate for us to argue at a time like this.” A brief grunt of exertion and she was up and running, diving through the shattered remnants of the window before Iruoch could even begin to draw near.
The world spun around her (and not in the direction she was tumbling), as exhaustion threatened to yank her back off her feet. She managed, if awkwardly, to roll upright and stagger forward. The courtyard, a simple square lawn with a variety of flowers in neat rows around the perimeter, was empty, suggesting that the others had wisely continued their flight.
Well, empty but for…
“Julien?!”
He was heading back her way, his left hand clutching the bloody wound in his side but his right wrapped about the hilt of his rapier. “I wasn't about to leave you alone to—”
“Chivalry later!” she shouted as a dark silhouette appeared in the bishop's window. “Desperate fleeing now!”
They fled.
Stumbling, leaning, and sometimes falling against each other, Widdershins and Julien passed through the narrow archway at the far end of the courtyard, shoving the thin, ivy-decorated gate from their path with enough force to loosen the squeaking hinges. They rounded the corner of the church, Widdershins propping herself up against the wall when it appeared that both of them might fall. She scraped her palm against the stone a time or two, and didn't even feel it; just another ember in what was currently a bonfire of pain.
The others awaited them in the road beyond, and a sorry band they made. Only Igraine and Paschal hadn't been wounded in the fray, and the constable, of course, still wore a sling from his earlier injury. Brother Ferrand, limping from where Widdershins had plowed into him, carefully supported the bishop, who was struggling to focus past the blood that trickled from his scalp wound. The monk was tugging on Sicard's sleeve, trying to entice him into flight, but apparently the bishop refused to leave the others behind.
It was almost enough to make Widdershins believe he was genuinely sorry for what had happened.
They were, the lot of them, the only people in the street. The crowds that should have been present—not just parishioners lingering after morning services, but the early ebb and flow of the day's traffic—were absent. Dropped baskets and parcels littering the street, as well as the occasional abandoned wagon and confused-looking draft horse, suggested that the lane had been rapidly abandoned.
Probably due to the gunshots and other sounds of violence from within the church, Widdershins decided. Which meant they could probably expect a Guard patrol within a few more minutes, for all the good they'd do.
“There!” She pointed a shaking finger toward the nearest wagon, a dilapidated thing of rough wood and cracked wheels, hitched to a particularly bored-looking roan. The horse flicked its mane at the sound of her approach, offered a flat and largely uninterested glance, and then returned its attention to whatever sorts of daydreams the average Galicien beast of burden preferred.
“U
h…” She could feel Julien's disbelief, but it was actually Brother Ferrand who voiced the first overt objection. “I, um, I don't think that we can outrun the creature in that. Maybe—”
“Would you just go?!” Widdershins shouted at him. And as none of the others had any better ideas, they went.
Widdershins reluctantly pushed away from Julien—yanking his rapier from its scabbard as she did so, and ignoring his yelp of protest—and jogged unsteadily ahead, reaching the wagon a few seconds before any of the others. “Just go with it,” she gasped to Olgun. “We—”
“There!”
She didn't know who had shouted the warning, but a quick glance back was certainly enough to tell her why. Iruoch was emerging from around the corner to the courtyard and moving toward them with his usual erratic, impossible pace. At least he was actually on the ground, not the church wall, but his jumbled dance steps put the lie to any pretense of humanity he might otherwise have made.
Widdershins lashed out with Julien's rapier and Olgun's power. Hemp and leather parted beneath the edge of the blade—an edge that, really, shouldn't have been keen enough for such a neat slice—and then, ignoring the startled cries of her gathering companions, she carelessly dropped the weapon.
Not that it would have done her much good anyway. No, she bent forward, her numb and exhausted fingers a blur as they worked, and prayed that Olgun could keep her moving fast enough to make this happen.
A few more seconds, just a few more…
She heard the patter of rapid footsteps cease with a crunch, saw a shadow fall across her, and knew without looking that Iruoch had leapt toward her, arms outstretched. With a final desperate surge—the very last bit of strength that either she or her god could muster—she, too, took to the air, bounding not out of the creature's path, but directly toward him!
They collided in midair, and the startled faerie didn't quite have time to grab at his enemy before they both tumbled once more to earth, each landing in a crouch, staring intently at one another.
