“Tamara,” I called out.
“Yes?” came the tremulous reply.
“I need you to get a couple of the girls and drag the guards into a cell. Take their weapons and tie them up, then lock the cell. Make sure you gag them, too.”
“Can you help us? What if they wake up?”
“If they wake up, hit them with something heavy. I can’t help you right now. I have to put my shoulder back in the socket.”
“Oh, let me help you,” one of the other girls said. “I took first aid in school, and they taught us how to do this.”
“Did you take it in this decade?” I asked.
“I’m seventeen, I took it six months ago.”
“That’s a lot better than the last time I took first aid. Come on over here.”
She came over, an athletic looking girl with a long brown ponytail and a deep tan. “I’m Elle,” she said. “This is going to hurt.”
“Everything always hurts, kid. It’s kinda my job.”
“You should look for a better job,” she said. “Now give me your sword belt and lie down on your stomach on the table.”
I did as she instructed, and she wrapped the belt around my wrist and buckled it. Then she slid on her back underneath the table and grabbed the belt. “Okay, I’m going to start pulling on ‘three.’ Ready?”
“Yeah.”
“One...two...” She pulled on my wrist right after the “two,” and it felt like somebody stabbed me in the shoulder. But after a few seconds, I felt a thunk, and my shoulder slipped back into the socket.
“That was mean,” I said, standing up and rubbing my shoulder.
“Yeah, well, I’m a teenager, I’m supposed to be terrible.” She grinned and got to her feet. She handed me back my sword belt and said, “You really should wear a sling until you can see a doctor, though.”
“This is my sword arm,” I replied. “And my gun hand. I think those are two things you all want me to have access to if we run into any more guards before we get out of here.”
“You mean guards like that one?” the girl asked, pointing toward the stairs. The guard I knocked out and left on the stairs was standing at the door, his mouth hanging open. I drew Bertha, wincing at the weight of the gun. I really hated to think how bad it was gonna hurt if I actually had to shoot anything. I wouldn’t put good odds on me keeping hold of my gun for a second shot.
“Don’t move,” I called out. The guard’s eyes snapped to mine, and then to the barrel of the gun. “You saw what this did to Scar earlier, right?”
“Scar?”
“The queen’s cousin, the royal asshole I killed in the circle this morning.”
“Oh yes, Chauvan. I saw.”
“Good. So you know what it will do to you, right?”
“I do.”
“Then take off your sword, put your hands in the air, and go join those nice fellows in the cell. Tamara, tie him up.”
The second she got within arm’s reach of him, it all went to shit. He grabbed the girl and, using her as a shield, ran for the stairs.
“Sonofabitch!” I shouted. “Get your pointy-eared ass back here!”
The guard wasn’t listening. Just trying to make it to the stairs before I killed his ass. But he didn’t count on the fighting spirit of one Tennessee teenager who had been taken away from her whole world, jammed in a cell, and told she was going to be sold into slavery. Not to mention made to pee in public and spend days on end without a working cell phone. Little Tamara was pissed.
She bit down on the guard’s hand, locking her teeth into his palm right in the webbing between his thumb and forefinger. He turned his attention to her, and the second he looked down at her, she jabbed her fingers at his eyes. He jerked his head back, but he had to separate a little from the girl to get out of range. She raked his cheeks with her nails, leaving four bloody furrows down one cheek. He dropped her completely, so she turned around and rammed her knee right in his balls.
That would have been way more effective if he wasn’t wearing armor. As it was, she kneed him right in the chain mail overskirt, which still wasn’t comfortable, but didn’t have quite the effect she was looking for. What it did have, however, was a hell of a motivating effect on her fellow prisoners.
The other five girls swarmed the guard like frat boys on a free keg, and he went down under an avalanche of flailing fists, elbows, and knees. One girl mounted the side of his head and started laying in knee strikes like Ronda Rousey’s pissed off baby sister, while a tall black girl stood over him with his ankle in both hands and one foot planted in his crotch. She just stood there, grinding one foot into his jewels and twisting his foot almost off with both hands.
They beat that poor guard until I reckoned he didn’t have a spot on him that wasn’t bruised, scratched, bloodied, or downright broken. He finally passed out, and I hollered for them to stop.
“That’s enough fun for one night,” I said in my best “coach voice.” “Now throw him in the cell with the others and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Then I remembered Puck and his girlfriend. I looked around at all the cells. They all stood empty except for the one full of unconscious or pissed off guards. “Was there anybody else here with y’all?” I asked Tamara.
“No, nobody.”
“Is there another dungeon?”
“Not that I know of, but the others have been here longer.” I turned to the other girls, but they all shook their heads “no.”
“Well, shit,” I said. “Oh well, let’s get y’all out of here, and I’ll figure out the rest when it comes to it.” I sent one of the smaller girls up the stairs to scout ahead, and when she came back with the all-clear, we walked up the stairs and out the front gate of the keep. We were almost to the front gates when one guard cocked his head to the side, then leaned over to the man next to him, obviously asking him a question.
“Run!” I yelled, and we hauled ass out the gate before the guards got their shit together enough to drop the portcullis. I laid one out with a tackle, and almost went down myself as my shoulder exploded in pain. Tamara helped he back to my feet, and we burst through the gates into the night.
Free! For the moment, at least. We still had to get out of the city gates, and we had every guard in Tisa’ron after us now. And I was in no shape to fight, so we were probably going to have to rely on our wits to get us out.
We were all doomed.
Chapter 14
We barreled down the city streets, ducking between carts and pedestrians and generally upsetting anyone we came in contact with. If we wanted to get out of town without being noticed, this was not the way to do it. After a few blocks, one of the smaller girls wove her way to the front of the pack and motioned for us to follow her.
“I’ve been here longer than anyone else. I know the quickest way to the gates!”
Tamara motioned for the rest of the girls to follow, and we all did as we were told. I ran through the streets of the capitol city of the Summer Court of the Fair Folk with half a dozen human refugees, dodging guard patrols and ducking into alleys when we had to, hauling ass for the gates whenever we could.
I felt like a year, but was probably more like half an hour, when the gates finally loomed into view. I waved all the girls into a nearby alley so we could catch our breath and plan for a second before trying to make our final escape.
As soon as we were far enough down the alley to be hidden from the street, I started stripping off armor, almost dropping to my knees when I tried to take the mail hauberk off. “Can one of y’all give me a hand with this thing?” I asked, gritting my teeth in pain.
The girl who put my shoulder back in place, Elle, and the girl who led us to the gates came over and tugged on my sleeves, pulling and yanking until the chain mail shirt was lying in a heap on the ground with the guard’s tabard and helmet I’d stolen. I sat down on a nearby crate and tried to catch my breath. Sweat rolled down my face from the pain and exertion of getting out of armor with a bum shoul
der.
“Why did you take your armor off?” Tamara asked. “We might still have to fight to get out of here.”
“We probably will,” I said, slipping into my shoulder holster. It had been tucked under my tabard, but now Bertha was just hanging out in the open for anyone to see. Oh well, it’s not like I wasn’t also wearing a friggin’ sword, so anyone in line of sight of me would know I was ready to throw down.
“But if I’m dressed like the biggest guard they have, and obviously not a half-ogre, then there’s no chance we get past the guards without a fight. A fight that I’m not sure I can win without killing a lot of people, which I’d rather avoid. So I’ll try to pass myself off as a traveler instead, which gives us maybe a three percent chance of not having to fight our way out of the city. But that’s two and a half percent more than we’d have with me in that armor. Not to mention the fact that it’s heavy as shit and my shoulder is killing me.”
“I’ve got some ibuprofen.” Tamara reached into her pocket and handed me a couple of brown pills.
“Screw ibuprofen, I’ve got some Vicodin,” Elle said. I raised an eyebrow at her. “Shut up, I get migraines. Take the stupid pills.” She dug around in her purse for a minute, then tossed me a translucent orange pill bottle. I shook out two Vicodin and dry-swallowed them with the ibuprofen.
“Great, gimme a bottle of Jack Daniels and I’ll be ready for the Guns N’ Roses reunion tour,” I said, getting to my feet. I cut a triangle out of the tabard and turned it inside out to form a makeshift sling. I put it over my head, then slipped my right arm into it. It still hurt, but the constant pounding was reduced to a dull throb once I got it immobilized somewhat. I drew Bertha, ejected the magazine of silver rounds, and slapped in the magazine of alternating white phosphorous and regular rounds. I left the silver round in the chamber, mostly because I couldn’t pull the slide back without help. I cocked my girl and slid the safety on, thanking my stars that the Desert Eagle had an ambidextrous safety.
After a couple of minutes, when I was recovered enough from dealing with my armor and my shoulder, I wiped the sweat off my face with the remaining scraps of the guard uniform and stood up. “Let’s roll. When we get to the gates, let me do the talking.” I really hoped I managed to do some good talking because my fighting and shooting was going to be pretty subpar for a while.
There wasn’t a ton of traffic leaving the city, but we tucked in behind a pair of big carts loaded with bags and crates. The guards gave the carts a quick look, then waved them on through. I started after, and the girls were right on my heels when the guards lowered their halberds, forming a barricade.
“Halt.” A smaller unarmed fairy with a pointy beard and a mustache waxed into long curlicues strutted up to me. His head barely reached my elbow, and by the look on his face, I knew we were screwed. I’ve had issues my whole life with short people in authority hating me on sight, just for being huge. This looked like it was going to be another one of those days.
“Where exactly do you band of rabble think you’re going?” the snotty little man said, pulling a sneer so extreme he looked like a refugee from a Billy Idol cover band.
Tamara stepped forward, her head bowed. “Pardon us, sir, we’re just heading out to pick berries for our Master Pudge the Baker, sir.” She put a groveling note into her voice that put a smile on the little fairy’s face and made my eyes go wide.
This smart-assed little kid managed to suck it up and play meek and mild? The least I could do was follow her lead. I stood there, silent and as stupid-looking as I could manage. Most people would say it wasn’t much of a stretch.
“What about this great oaf? He looks too dim to know a blueberry from nightshade.” He was right, of course, but it didn’t make me want to pop his head like a zit any less.
Tamara laughed, but kept her eyes downcast. “Oh, you’re right, sir. Olaf doesn’t pick berries; he just stands guard. Look at how big he is, and he’s strong as a horse, too.”
“Looks like his arm is hurt. How much guarding can he do like that?” the guard asked.
“Oh, he’s still strong enough with his other hand to hurt somebody. See? Olaf, pick me up.” She pointed to her belt, and I reached down with my left hand and hoisted her into the air without any effort at all. I set her down, keeping my right arm pressed tight against my chest to keep Bertha from falling out of my makeshift sling and raising questions I could only answer with a ton of bullets and bloodshed.
“Alright,” the guard said. “I suppose you’re fine. Go on through, but try to keep a small basket of berries for me...wait a moment.”
And that’s when it all went to shit. The second the guards realized that we were “going out to pick berries” without a single basket or bucket between the seven of us was the same time that a breathless castle guard rounded the corner half a block behind us and started shouting about prisoners and escaping, and all sorts of really unpleasant accusations. All of which were true, of course, but still unpleasant.
One guard hit the release on the portcullis, and the one nearest me reached for his sword. I drew Bertha and rapped the butt of the big pistol across his forehead, making his helmet ring like a bell and his knees buckle. I grabbed his halberd and jammed the blade into the door behind him, effectively locking his buddies in the guard tower for a few seconds at least.
Tamara kicked Waxed Mustache right in the sweets and followed that up with an elbow strike to the back of the head. She looked up at me and grinned. I raised an eyebrow.
“What?” she said, plastering an innocent look on her face. “A girl can’t like UFC? Come on, redneck, Conor MacGregor’s hot. And a badass.”
“Well, Little Miss Badass, we better get the hell out of here before the rest of the guards get through that door.” The rest of the girls had already swarmed the other guard and taken him down. He apparently hadn’t wanted to draw his sword on a passel of little girls, and he got a quick lesson in girl power when they beat his ass for him. We all bolted back into the city, passing through the city square at a dead run.
We had half a dozen guards hot on our heels when I spotted a familiar sign hanging off to our right. “In here!” I shouted, then slammed open the door to the pub where I’d spent most of the day. The second the last girl was through the door, I slammed it shut and barred it with the board leaning on the wall.
I turned to the bartender, who stood behind the bar, still polishing a glass. For all I knew, it was the same glass he was polishing that morning when I walked in. I hustled over to the bar and leaned on it.
“We need a back way out,” I said, looking around. No guards, at least. We had that much going for us for once.
“Don’t have one,” was the laconic reply.
“Every bar has a back way out,” I argued.
“Not this one,” he said, implacable.
“Come on,” I pushed. “The guards will be here in minutes, and if they find us in here, it’ll be a bigger mess than the last time I was here.”
“Find that hard to believe. That chair cost me ten crowns. And I had to get a man in here to fix the table. Not to mention how hard it is to get blood out of hardwood floors.”
I looked around. The floor was dotted everywhere I looked with bloodstains, beer stains, and stains of an origin I neither recognized nor wanted to think about. I pointed to the spot where I left the guard lying a few hours before. “You just threw sawdust on it. You didn’t even try to get the stain up.” Sure enough, there was a light sprinkling of sawdust over the spot, barely enough to even call a token effort.
“That’s step one. It takes several treatments to return the floor to its previous luster.” He said it with a straight face, I had to give him credit for that.
Tamara hopped up on the bar and then to her feet. A dagger materialized in her hands from somewhere, and I realized she must have taken it off of Waxed Mustache back at the gate. And why not? When you’re going to be either sold into slavery or hanged for escaping the dungeon and assaulting the q
ueen’s guard, what’s a little petty theft but the cherry on top?
“Show us to the back door, or I’ll gut you like a fish.” She glared down at the bartender, who set his glass and rag down at last.
Then he blurred into motion, and the next thing I knew, Tamara was lying on her back flat on the bar, and the barkeep was holding the knife at her throat. He stared down at her for a long moment with the same emotionless expression he’d worn ever since I first saw him some seven hours before, then he flipped the knife over in his hand and handed to her, hilt-first.
“Put that away before somebody gets hurt, child. I said there wasn’t a back door, and there isn’t. But there is a way out, although you won’t like it.”
“Is it better than being dead?” Tamara asked.
“Yes.”
“Better than being sold into slavery to some Winter Court fae or other creature?”
“Yes.”
“Better than being locked up in a dungeon?”
“Probably, but it’s a near thing.”
“We’ll take out chances. Now lead us to it before the guards break down that door and Bubba turns every piece of furniture you own into kindling.”
He stared at the girl again, then held out his hand. She took his hand and slid down off the bar. The bartender waved for us to follow him and went through a door on the far side of the bar. Tamara went first, then the rest of the girls. I brought up the rear, just in case our pursuers caught up to us before we were safely away.
We all clustered in a small storeroom behind the bar, piled high with kegs, empty and full, as well as dozens of liquor bottles, wine casks, and boxes of assorted dry goods. The bartender knelt in the center of the room and pressed with both hands on the floor. I heard a loud click, and a section of floor about two feet by four feet sprang up slightly. Our host pulled the planking up and exposed a hole leading into blackness underneath the bar. I leaned over the hole, and a stink wafted up that almost knocked me down.
“Holy shit, that stinks!” I exclaimed, stepping back.
Midsummer - A Bubba the Monster Hunter Novella Page 10
