Unnatural Issue

by Mercedes Lackey

  The boggarts took this as a sign of victory and shrieked their happiness. They surged forward ahead of the walking dead, which were still being decimated by the blessed salt rounds Peter and Garrick were shooting.

  The boggarts got closer, darting about like insects, moving too fast to get a good shot at, either with a shell or magic. They were horrid little things. They had mouths full of nasty, yellowed, pointed teeth, tiny eyes like black beads, and they drooled. No two of them were alike, but they all looked misshapen, and all were colors that just seemed unhealthy.

  The kobolds were bigger, tougher, and uniformly clay-colored. They moved just as fast, though, and as the group continued to retreat, they began using slings to pelt the humans with sharp-edged rocks.

  Peter took a hit to the forehead that cut a gash there that started to bleed. He yelled with the unexpected pain, and the kobolds howled with glee. He blasted them with the salt; they skittered out of the way and resumed their barrage.

  And then—then his left foot splashed into the brook. And a sheet of water sprang up around all of them, deflecting the incoming stones.

  A troll lumbered forward and was set upon by undines. They tore at him with long fingers and swirled around him like a swarm of angry bees. To Peter’s shock, the creature began to melt, dissolve, howling the entire time.

  And that was when their own army arrived. The Earth Elementals of the land of Branwell Hall had rallied, and they were not going to concede without a fight.

  Slung stones whizzed over the humans’ heads from behind. The fauns had gotten their hands on their weapons. and now they were angry and on the offensive. And they weren’t afoot where they would be vulnerable. They were riding the backs of some of the most magnificent stags Peter had ever seen. He hadn’t even known that there were deer on the grounds of Branwell, in fact.

  The deer bounded toward the mass of kobolds; the kobolds tried to swarm them, but the deer fought like the horses of mounted knights, lashing out with their wicked little hooves and slashing with their antlers.

  The undines pulled down another troll, now joined by dryads; the fauns and deer had fully occupied the kobolds and boggarts. That just left the walking dead.

  There didn’t seem to be an end to them. Where had Whitestone found all the bodies? And the power! It took a tremendous amount of power to raise that many dead! Where was he getting that?

  Michael and Charles switched back to the salt loads, and still they kept pouring over the wall. The stench was a horrific wave, drowning them, weakening them as they tried to keep their concentration.

  And they were running out of ammunition.

  “That was my last shell, my lord,” Garrick said calmly, as he reversed his grip on his shotgun to hold it by the barrel, the better to use it as a club.

  Peter felt in his bag and came up with only two more. He rammed them home, brought the gun up, and fired, point-blank, into the three that were advancing on Garrick. Now he flipped his own weapon around to follow Garrick’s example. “Have I ever mentioned how much I hate shootin’?” he asked, taking a swing at a mostly-naked skull and knocking it off the shoulders it sat on.

  “From time to time, m’lord,” Garrick replied, breaking the arms off a liche that tried to grab Charles.

  “Well, I take it all back.” He bashed in another skull. Unfortunately, losing their heads didn’t seem to affect these horrors. Only being shot with the salt or reduced to broken fragments kept them from continuing to attack. “I’d be damned happy to be shootin’ right now.” He spared a moment to glance at the revenants pushing against the arcane boundary above the wall. “Michael, if your shield gives way, we’re going to be in a bit of a bother.”

  “Then we’d better hope it doesn’t!” Michael Kerridge shouted back.

  Another pair of trolls and a wave of goblins came over the top of the wall. Peter’s arms burned with fatigue. The walking dead pushed the four of them back a little farther, until they were standing in the middle of the brook. Michael and Charles had reversed their guns as well, and they all stood back-to-back, with the water rushing against their legs. The undines and fauns were doing their best, but they were virtually helpless against the walking dead.

  “Now would be a very good time for Alderscroft to materialize,” Peter said, hopefully.

  And just as the words were out of his mouth, the necromantic army suddenly froze.

  Abruptly, what was left of the trolls tore themselves loose from their undine captors and lumbered away. The boggarts and kobolds dove down into the turf as if they were diving into a pool of water, and vanished.

  The revenants scattered, flying off too fast for the eye to follow.

  And most importantly of all, the walking dead suddenly stiffened and collapsed.

  Silence descended.

  For a very long moment they all just stood there, back to back, waiting for some new, worse horror to rise up and descend on them. Their allies milled restlessly, looking for the next wave. But it never came. Finally, they relaxed the slightest bit; Peter was finally able to concentrate on something other than staying alive to create a ball of magical light. It illuminated faces haggard with exhaustion. “What just happened?” Charles wondered aloud.

  Peter shrugged. He ached with fatigue and bruises. “I haven’t the foggiest. I doubt invokin’ the Old Lion’s name did it.”

  “Unless the necromancer was within earshot, recognized the name, and thought that you were seriously expecting the Lodge, Peter,” Michael pointed out. “He knows Alderscroft. He knows how the Old Lion will regard this.”

  “He’d better know a place where the Old Lion can’t find him,” Peter said grimly, and coughed. “Because this was a direct attack, and Alderscroft will rightly read that as a declaration of war. The kid gloves are going to come off, and when the Hunting Lodge gets hold of him, if he lives, he is never going to be out of magical bonds for the remainder of his life. Let’s get out of this stench before I disgrace m’self. Good gad, I want a bath and a brandy!”

  One of the dryads glided over to Michael. “We will see this is cleansed, if you wish,” she whispered.

  Michael hesitated a moment. “The bodies came from somewhere—shouldn’t we see they are returned to their proper graves?”

  “Most of ’em are in bits,” Peter pointed out. “Besides that, how would you explain how they all got here?”

  “You have a point.” Michael turned toward the dryad. “You can do this?”

  “Willingly. It is our forest too, we would rather not endure . . . this.” She waved her hand at the remains of the carnage. “In the morn, it will be as if none of this had happened.”

  “Then if you would be so kind, please take care of it,” Michael said gratefully. The dryad nodded, and faded into her tree. The four of them turned to go back up to the Hall.

  But before they moved out of sight, Peter looked back a moment. The turf was heaving and churning, and the no-longer-walking dead were slowly being pulled under it, as if the grass were water and they were sinking into it, never to be seen again.

  He hoped.

  Back at the Hall, all four of the men, including Garrick, were enveloped in a different sort of swarm—a bevy of servants descended on them and carried them off separately. In no time at all, Peter found himself with that brandy in his hand, soaking his injuries in a hot bath.

  There were rather a lot of them. Bruises mostly, and some big ones he didn’t remember getting. He had a couple of scalp lacerations and that one cut above his right eye from the kobolds’ slung stones. An experimental deep breath proved that the huge bruise across his chest that was already turning black was only that, just a bruise, and not broken ribs. For small blessings, we are grateful. He waved off further assistance and dressed himself in the clothing that had been brought up from the cottage. He wanted to find out what had happened at the Hall.

  So, it seemed, did the others. Garrick popped out of the suite across the hallway when Peter opened his door, and they followed t
he sound of voices down to the cozy “little” (in a house this size, “little” was relative) sitting room Elizabeth preferred to use. There he found Michael and Charles, both with sticking-plaster over facial cuts, eating prodigious quantities of Welsh rarebit, and with them, Susanne and Elizabeth. Susanne was not in a uniform; it looked as if Elizabeth had supplied her with a spare gown in the form of a loose Artistic Reform dress. She was drinking tea, looking exhausted and a little pale.

  “Join us, there’s plenty,” Charles said around a mouthful of bread and melted cheese. Nothing loath, Peter helped himself at the sideboard and brought his plate to sit with the others while one of the servants poured him a cup of black tea so dark it looked lethal. He sat down with the rest and looked attentively at Elizabeth.

  “Michael already told us what happened to you,” Elizabeth said, passing him sugar and cream. “We’ve just been waiting to tell you what happened up here.”

  “What did happen?” Peter asked. “I can’t imagine from the fire in your eye that you were left in peace.”

  “Redcaps,” Elizabeth said grimly. “They jumped straight out of the dungpile at the stables. And they came straight for Susanne.”

  “It was a good thing I had a pocket full of horseshoe nails,” Susanne said. “And a fireplace poker.”

  “And she knows how to use it,” Elizabeth chuckled, then sobered. “She scattered the nails around her so they couldn’t get near enough to grab her, then broke the arm of anything that reached for her across the boundary of the nails. That was brilliantly done, Susanne. I would never have thought of that myself. I think that the attack down at the walls was a ruse so that Richard Whitestone could get inside the grounds elsewhere and conjure his redcaps to come after Susanne. Once he was inside the boundaries—”

  “—he could do anything he liked,” Michael finished for her. “Damnation! I should have thought of that.”

  “We did—well, we planned for something to get by you,” Elizabeth pointed out. “Even if he hadn’t turned into a foul necromancer, I would be exceedingly vexed with Richard Whitestone right now. I know I should be grateful that he so completely underestimated the ability of us womenfolk to defend ourselves, but I feel positively offended by the pathetic force he sent against us.”

  “Well, I’ll be grateful for you,” Peter said, and frowned. “You know, there is not a single chance that he is going to allow himself to be caught. He abandoned every one of his walking dead, and he has to know that we know who he is now. He’ll go into hiding, and he used to be the one who tracked necromancers down. We’ll never find him unless he makes a mistake.”

  “Unfortunate but true,” Michael replied, looking worried. “And he won’t try another frontal assault; he can’t afford to, with Alderscroft watching for him. We’re not as powerful as he is; like it or not, he was an Earth Master, and his power holds no matter that he’s taken the shadow-path.” He turned awkwardly to Susanne. “My dear young lady—”

  “Na, tha’ needn’t say it,” she replied with resignation. “Tha’ canna keep me safe. I’d already reckoned that. I won’t be the cause of any more people getting hurt. Next time might be worse than just hurt.” She sighed and turned toward Peter. “I’ll be takin’ tha’ boat t’France, my lord.”

  “Well done,” Peter said warmly. “Hang the other plans, those were made before we were attacked in force. Garrick and I will go with you the whole way, and Peter Scott if he can be spared. If your father can track you to the Ardennes, then there’s no place safe but the other side of the world.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Charles.

  Richard Whitestone was in something very like a panic.

  He had never expected that he would fail. But he had, and now it was a dead certainty that Lord Alderscroft would have the entire White Lodge howling for his blood.

  He abandoned his entire army, leaving the reanimated corpses to drop where they stood. He had come here in the farm cart, assuming he would have Susanne to bring back with him; he went over the wall and sprinted to the place where he’d hidden it. He whipped the horse into as fast a pace as he dared set on a night-shrouded road and tried to think of what he could do next.

  He couldn’t go home; that would be the first place they would look. He had not yet established any bolt-holes on the moor as he had planned to do. The only good thing was that Alderscroft could not possibly set the conventional police on him.

  He knew he sounded like a madman as he alternately cursed Michael Kerridge for an interfering busybody and thought out loud about where he should go.

  Then it struck him: The one place where no one would look for an Earth Master was London.

  Furthermore, he had money there, money from Rebecca’s side of the family, money that Alderscroft didn’t know about. He could take a flat or even an entire house, the sorts of creatures he could use flocked there in droves, living off the poison, the misery, the filth. His own tainted magic would be utterly lost in the midden that was London.

  And no one would ever look for him there. They thought he was just some country cousin who couldn’t abide the city and was not familiar with how to conduct himself. Well, he had not been able to abide the place before; but that certainly wasn’t the case now. As for not knowing how to conduct himself there—well, he was no country cousin. He had gone to Cambridge. He knew how to move about a big city.

  He heard the distant sound of a train whistle above the sound of his horse’s hooves. It was the last train of the evening to London; the very opposite of a “flyer,” it made stops at every town along the way. Yes . . . yes, he could certainly beat that train to Whitby. He could get a ticket there, get on, and vanish. There was nothing to connect the horse and cart with him; he could just abandon them and leave a mystery for the constables in Whitby to never solve.

  And once in London it would be trivial to keep track of Charles and Michael Kerridge . . . because besides wanting his property, he wanted revenge.

  Curse them. Charles most of all. Charles was the one who had taken Susanne in. Charles was most likely the one who had organized the defense of Branwell against him.

  Well, he wasn’t going to give up. He would get Susanne back. He would complete his transformation.

  He would have Rebecca back. Nothing and no one was going to stand in his way.

  15

  IT was nearly the end of June, but it felt to Susanne as though it had been years since May Day. Peter had left her with his great-uncle, but then he had been forced to hurry off because of some pother about anarchists and the assassination of a duke or count or some sort of titled German who had been killed in some place she had never even heard of. He had been tense and distressed, but no one here seemed to be.

  “Eh,” his great-uncle had said, shrugging his shoulders eloquently. “There will be another to take his place. They breed most efficiently, those Germans.”

  Nevertheless, Peter and Garrick went back on the same ferry, and Peter Scott went with them. Fortunately, she had not been entirely alone.

  She picked the last of the ripe peas from the vines in the kitchen garden and straightened, laden basket in her arms. She smiled to see “Uncle Paul’s” other guest still hard at work, frowning at whatever it was she had on her easel and occasionally lunging forward to stab at it with a brush. Mary Shackleford was a very aggressive artist. She said she was an Impressionist. Well, if she stabbed any harder on that canvas she was definitely going to make an impression on it!

  Mary was English, too, and fortunately spoke fluent French and Flemish, which was useful this close to the Belgian border. Uncle Paul was a fine fellow, but his English was heavily accented and—creative. Between Susanne’s Yorkshire accent and Uncle Paul’s eccentric English, half the time they’d never have understood each other if it hadn’t been for Mary.

  Susanne took the peas to the kitchen, pausing on the stone threshold in hopes that this time she would be allowed inside the sacred precincts to help. She very much wanted
to learn some of the cook’s culinary secrets; she had a way with vegetables that was sublime, and as for the sauces! But the cook took the peas from her and gave her a wordless look that told Susanne that she was not welcome in that kitchen. Uncle Paul’s cook had very firm notions of what gentry were and were not to be doing. They might choose to putter about in the gardens; that was respectable. Helping in the kitchen was definitely one of those forbidden things that gentry should never be allowed to try. Susanne turned back to the garden to watch Mary paint a bit more.

  Mary had been an addition to the traveling party halfway across the Channel, evidently an old, old friend of Peter’s and a fellow Elemental mage. Peter had recognized her in the first class dining cabin and brought her over to meet Susanne. On discovering that Mary was headed to the Ardennes to paint landscapes and was in dire need of a place to stay, Peter issued an invitation on Uncle Paul’s behalf.

  It seemed that Uncle Paul had no trouble with Peter high-handedly inviting not one but two young ladies to stay with him. Perhaps that was the way of things with Elemental magicians. Susanne made a note to ask him about it.

  It was true that he had plenty of room. This stone farmhouse was almost as big as Whitestone Hall, though it boasted no grander name than “Paul Delacroix’s house.” It was a beautiful building, two stories plus an attic with bedrooms, constructed of gray fieldstone with floors of terracotta. Paul, his housekeeper, his three maids, his cook, three boys who idled a great deal and occasionally did some useful work, and his farm manager all rattled around in the place, which had bedrooms for eight, not counting the ones for the maids and the farm boys in the attic.

  To call this a farm was something of a misnomer, since the land around here was not very suitable for farming. Paul had a vineyard and a great many cattle, which roamed the forested hills of his property at will. Susanne had offered to help in the dairy, but these were not dairy cattle; they were being raised strictly for meat. They had three more cow boys who tended them but didn’t sleep at the house. Paul was a “gentleman farmer” in the truest sense: He was indifferent to whether or not he made a profit, though his manager was adamant about doing so.