Well, that’s that, Gautier thought as he bored holes into the bar top with his eyes. Robinette had gone to the castle…and hadn’t come back. He didn’t like to think of why that might be.
It was too bad that Robinette hadn’t stuck around to see Gautier in action, when the marauders had come, when the flocks fled, when the people were starving, and he had stepped up to be the hero they needed. Sometimes it wasn’t enough just to help people. You needed to be seen and appreciated or it wasn’t worth it.
He knew he wasn’t doing himself any favors with these thoughts. He hadn’t had this much ale to drink for a while, and it nibbled at his will to resist. Well, too late to hold back now. He was just in the halfway zone, drunk enough to remember, but not too drunk to forget. Time to fix that.
Gautier rested his elbows on the counter at the edge of the tavern floor and grabbed a flaky meat pie off of a heaping platter that had just come out of the oven. It was still piping hot, but too delicious to wait for, so he burned his mouth a little as he wolfed it down. Madame Ésprits sauntered over to him.
“Looks like you’ve been chewing on some things,” she said knowingly. Gautier could tell that she wasn’t talking about the pie.
“You read me like scripture, Madame Ésprits,” Gautier said.
“You’re thinking of that fool girl again.”
“I have my weak spots. But you! You have your strengths. And I wonder if you have something strong enough to forget her tonight.”
Madame Ésprits huffed, as if he should even ask. She disappeared into a room behind the bar and returned a moment later with a small brown bottle that had a fat cork stuck in the wide mouth. “You drink this, you’ll forget your own name for a few hours.”
“You’re an angel among mortals, Madame.” Gautier set a gold coin on the counter, but she ignored it. He knew she would, and he recovered it when she wasn’t looking. It was, after all, Gautier’s kills that kept her kitchens open. Theirs wasn’t a formal arrangement, it was just an arrangement, and he liked that. Madame Ésprits was simultaneously wise and uncomplicated. Between that and her exquisite stores of liquor, their little mountain town would never need a doctor of any kind.
With one thumb, Gautier popped the cork and raised the bottle to his nose.
A sharp, dry sweetness invaded his senses, so dry in fact that Gautier almost thought he’d taken a drink just from the fumes. Suppressing a cough, he took a swig in a motion that was equal parts drinking and breathing. The cool, clear liquid burned all the way down and dragged the final remnants of the chill night with it, filling him with a warmth so sudden that sweat practically squirted out of his pores.
“Sacrebleu!” he exclaimed, eyes wide as he choked down a breath. Any lesser man would have reeled backward, but Gautier’s boots remained anchored to the wooden floor. He was in this state, trying feebly to maintain control of his senses whilst simultaneously wishing to throw his awareness to the wind, when the front doors of the tavern burst inward with a sharp crack.
Every head in the room turned, including Gautier’s, which he immediately regretted. Just that slight motion sent the world beneath his feet into a whirl, like a spinning top. Two vaguely humanoid shapes blurred into one in the dark arch of the doorway, and a stranger stumbled in, weary and wobbly with exhaustion.
Gautier registered that there was a hasty hubbub among the townsfolk as they rushed to the aid of a cloaked and unknown traveler, clearly set upon by the elements, crusted at the shoulders and hood with ice and snow, the cold bite of which pushed into the room with the wind from outside. Madame Ésprits barked at someone to close the doors, and as the traveler was helped to a nearby table, Gautier blinked away the worst of the drink’s effects, and his vision steadied.
Madame Ésprits was saying something about the door. Yes, that.
She hated it when the doors slammed inward. Anyone dumb enough to slam them twice would never be fortunate enough to enter a third time, not without a long stint in the kitchen, scrubbing it to perfection. Even the little children knew not to do it. This traveler was not of their town. A marauder, then?
Gautier’s mind slogged through the sedative effect of the liquor, reminding him that he had a hunting dagger hidden in his belt, should it be necessary. Good. He was okay…he suddenly regretted the drink. Small voices in his mind demanded that he be sober for this new development.
“Pierre, fetch coffee!” Madame Ésprits called to one of the young men behind her. The blond boy scuttled off to the kitchen and returned a moment later with a steaming mug and a pot that Gautier eyed with envy.
“P-p-please,” the traveler croaked. She had a soft voice. Yes, she was a woman. Gautier sniffed a little, wondering how long it would take for Madame Ésprits’ best stuff to wear off.
“Tell us your name, dearie,” said Madame Ésprits.
“Je suis Danielle,” she said, and she graciously accepted the coffee from Pierre, who had even brought a saucer with cream and sugar, but these went ignored as she downed the hot drink in one gulp. Murmurs and furtive glances rippled through the throng of onlookers gathered at the spectacle of the storm-beaten woman, who yet remained hidden beneath her cloak, shivering.
“Gautier, your chair is empty,” Madame Ésprits said, snapping her fingers. “Let her have it. Get her over to the fire, hop to it!”
Gautier watched, numb, as two strong farmers helped Danielle over to his favorite chair. He didn’t protest. Leroux still sat in the other one, dozing lightly with the help of the house brew. Danielle was muttering, her teeth clicking like a rattle, and as she settled in Gautier’s chair, he took note of a few people looking at him in that certain way, like they expected him to know what to do.
Clearly Madame Ésprits was taking charge here, but Gautier couldn’t see how it would hurt for him to get involved and make it look like things were under control. He stood a little taller, stepped a little closer, arms folded across his chest, and he set his jaw in the way that he did when he was thinking hard, considering a weighty matter, but the liquor wouldn’t let any coherent sentence come to his lips just yet. Fortunately Madame Ésprits spared him.
“Collect yourself, and tell us what’s wrong, dearie.”
Danielle took a deep breath, and her chattering slowed, though her face still hid under the cloak. Gautier could just see the smooth curve of her chin as it quivered.
“R-ran out of food. Only had our st-stocks, to sell. He said we couldn’t eat th-those. We were lost and hungry and the storm came. It came.” She trailed off, and then with an abrupt shutter she jolted upright in the chair, causing her hood to fall back, revealing long locks of rich brunette hair, fair porcelain skin, and piercing blue eyes. These were wide open, swollen with the stark realization of something remembered, something of severe importance, and it was written on her face that this was the first thing she had meant to say when she had stumbled in, but had forgotten it in her cold and hunger.
“Mon frère! It took my brother!”
~2~
If they had at first been suspicious that Danielle was a spy for the once-beaten Germans, those fears were soon laid to rest: her French was too sharp, too crisp, and authentic in all the right ways. She hailed from a neighboring province, travelling with her brother, Philippe Duflot, a name that drew murmurs from the tavern occupants. Gautier knew Monsieur Henri Duflot and his son, Philippe; they were traders of cured meats, fine cheeses, bottled wines, and other delectables. Every winter they made their way down a well-guarded forest road to sell their wares to the highest bidder. Henri had mentioned once or twice in passing that he had a daughter at home, but Gautier had never met her.
“Her story checks out,” Gautier said with authority, and perhaps a little louder than necessary. He didn’t see Danielle glance up at him and almost roll her eyes.
“Where is your father, miss?” Madame Ésprits asked, topping off Danielle’s mug for the third time already.
“Sick, and in need of medicines, but with mother’s passing this
last summer we have been shorthanded on the farm, and our resources are strained. We meant to sell the winter stock to get Papa the things he needs, so Philippe and I risked the journey.” She sniffed, though she didn’t cry. “We were perhaps eight miles from this town when we stopped to camp for the night. We have wagons, and had to rest our horses, even though we were both anxious to get here. Around sunset, the horses spooked, and there was something in the woods. We needed light…Philippe dumped a bottle of Grappa on the fire, made it flare up. It lit the whole clearing, and that’s when it attacked.”
“What was it?” asked Monsieur Rousseau, who leaned in close with the others.
“I…I don’t know,” Danielle whispered. “I can only say that it was some kind of monster. It could not have been a bear, nor a stag, nor a wolf, yet it was somehow all of these things. I didn’t get a good look at it, only its pieces. It attacked Philippe’s cart. He tried to fight it off, and then we were set upon by armored men.”
“Germans!” said Monsieur Didier, the blacksmith. He spat upon the ground.
“Mais non, Monsieur.” Danielle sniffed away the last of her cold. “I thought so at first, but they spoke our language, bore our emblems.” She brushed at a spot on her cloak just over the breast, indicating a marking that the men had in that area.
Madame Ésprits looked up to Gautier, confused. He shrugged, not trusting his tongue just yet. He wasn’t even sure he’d heard it right. A monster? Armored men?
“You think I’m crazy,” Danielle said.
“No, we just think you sound crazy,” Gautier said helpfully. Madame Ésprits glared at him as though what he’d said wasn’t helpful. He replayed it in his head, and…oh. Wretched liquor!
“One of those metal men was the beast’s handler. It wore a collar, and the metal man had a leash on it. It followed his orders. The other men captured my brother and tried to capture me. All I could do was ride my horse here at full speed, to the only town I knew on the map, and try to get help. Yes, it sounds crazy, but I know what I saw. They left marks on me when they tried to ensnare me with their metal cables.” Danielle pulled up the sleeve of her coat, which bore the marks of rope burns, and her supple flesh was streaked with a coiled red tendril.
“Young miss, you have to understand,” Madame Ésprits began. “That is to say, put yourself in our position. We have had a very hard year, the weather is harsh tonight, and we have seen nothing to match what you have described. We simply struggle to believe something so fantastic.”
The tavern door swung open again, gently this time, and Gautier saw another young man come through—Gerard, one of Madame Ésprits’ boys. “Mom, there’s a horse outside. Bridle, but no saddle. Looks fit to be dead.”
“His name is LePrix,” Danielle said. “He is mine.”
“Take him to the stables and get him under a blanket, Gerard.”
“Yes Mom.”
“Look, you have been tremendously hospitable, but I have to be on my way. I will pay you for the coffee and extra for the fire, but my brother is out there and I can’t sit still while he’s in danger.”
“You can’t go back out there. You’ll get lost in the dark, and in the snow,” Gautier said. “Even if we could find your camp, if there’s a trail left by this creature, it will be snowed over by now.”
“But Monsieur Gautier would be delighted to take you at dawn, would he not?” Madame Ésprits said, fixing Gautier with a loaded look that implied he ought to agree.
“That is if these tin men and their beast are real,” Gautier snorted, none-too-loudly. “Have they any distinguishing marks, mademoiselle? Or should we just pick apart the woods in search of men wrapped in metal?”
“The emblems on their breastplates,” Danielle said, her voice almost a whisper. Everyone leaned in closer to hear her as she trailed off, her gaze distant, recalling some small detail. “The breastplate bore an imprint, over the heart. It was a crown, and in the middle of the crown there was a rose.”
The room fell dead silent, but for the crackling of the fire and the sharp whistle of Leroux’s snores.
“Bon sang,” said Madame Ésprits. “That is the emblem of Prince Aubrey.”
And then all eyes were on Gautier, as if he knew what that meant. He did. And now he wanted nothing more than a full pot of coffee and thirty minutes to clear his head.
“The prince. Mon Dieu, what does that mean?” asked Mathieu Vancant, the local baker.
“I know what it means,” Gautier growled. “Everyone stay here. I need to check something, I’ll be back in half an hour. Mademoiselle,” he said, with a parting nod to Danielle as he pulled the hood of his cloak up over his head. He felt their eyes on him as he exited the tavern, and he usually appreciated the attention of his fellow villagers, but not tonight. This was different. If Prince Aubrey was involved, then…
No. He couldn’t think that way. That was the liquor talking. Yes, he hated Aubrey, but to think that this stranger in the tavern, who told a tale with no proof, would suddenly convince everyone that a squad of armored men with a monster in tow were ravaging travelers at the prince’s request…that was a stretch. Sighing, Gautier strolled through the snowy streets of the town, finding his way by the light of a lantern on a pole he had grabbed outside Le Chambellan.
He had walked maybe five minutes when he saw fresh tracks in the snow, and even a drunk Gautier was still Gautier the Woodsman. His eye naturally followed the tracks to where he could no longer see them, then studied the little impressions nearest to his own feet, analyzing as the cold of the night seeped the warmth of the booze out of his blood.
Horse tracks, obviously. Recent, as they hadn’t been filled in by the snow that stopped an hour prior. The right rear leg had a bad shoe. He’d seen that before…he knew that horse, didn’t he? There was a name and a face with them, but he couldn’t remember. Beside the horse tracks was a set of bipedal markings, which didn’t match anything Gautier had ever seen. They were in pairs, but the heel of the foot was sharp and the toes were splayed wide apart. Each of these footprints was deep and clear. What had made them?
With nothing better to do, Gautier followed the tracks, and before long he found himself on the road to a farm that he hadn’t seen since the summer, when the owner’s daughter had brutally rejected his proposal for marriage.
Robinette.
Why did she keep coming up?
Fuming, he kept following the trail. The partial moon lit the white snow to something like the dull glow of predawn light. Between that and his lantern, he was able to find his way easily. When the farm came into view, he immediately noticed the open cellar doors next to the barn. Faint yellow light projected two dark shadows from within, and he heard someone rummaging around in there even from across the road.
He heard her voice before he saw her, that beautiful, unmistakable soft voice. Who was she talking to? Gautier strode closer until he reached Robinette’s fence. A small person, perhaps as large as a ten year-old boy, emerged from the cellar and peered back inside as if awaiting something. It looked almost as if he was wearing a knight’s metal armor, but that couldn’t be…nobody would make armor for a boy that size. Yet here it was.
The armored boy awaited further instruction. Robinette was still down there, handing things to this boy, which he then loaded into the bulging saddlebags of a nearby horse.
Gautier watched, perplexed and immensely curious as to what they were doing. Robinette hadn’t yet come back into view, but the young man kept reaching to grab things from her. At one point he turned his body in such a way that Gautier saw the front of his breastplate, and upon it was Prince Aubrey’s crown-and-rose emblem.
Danielle had been telling the truth?
It got weirder than that. Gautier also got a look at the rest of the metal boy’s profile, matching it in his head to Danielle’s description of a figure wrapped in copper armor, like a chevalier, only without a horse. What Danielle had failed to mention—and this was likely due to her haste at the time—was the
rhythmic thumping of some kind of contraption on the young man’s back, which produced an odd combination of whistles and thumps, spitting out tiny clouds of steam from two pipes sticking out of its underside.
Impossible. Nonsensical. Why would…
Whatever Madame Ésprits had put in that bottle of hers, she had severely undersold its hallucinogenic qualities.
No, he realized. He was still drunk, sure, but the cold had stripped away the worst of the drink’s effects. Gautier had control of his faculties. He knew what he was looking at, even if he couldn’t believe it. And what was even worse was the fact that Robinette had come to town, ridden right past the tavern, and went straight to her barn without even so much as looking for Gautier. It only made sense for that fop Aubrey to have one of his soldiers in the area…have mercy, was Robinette in trouble? Was she operating under duress? Why else would she be here?
“There you are!” called a shockingly loud voice from behind him. Gautier spun, dagger in hand, to see Leroux stumbling through the snow, his short, squat body still swaying from the effects of Madame Ésprits’ house brew. “Took forever to follow them boots of yours. Guess who got knock-out drunk again?”
“Shut—”
“ME! I did!”
“Keep your voice down!” Gautier hissed.
“Reap your boy’s crown!” Leroux laughed, then hiccupped, then fell on his face in the snow, his body lurching with contained laughter.
“Shut it, Leroux! They’ll hear us!” Gautier kicked Leroux in the side and immediately regretted it, as the noise that came out of his friend’s throat was even louder than his laugh. The muffled sounds from Robinette’s cellar died out in an instant. Gautier froze.
“What was that?” she asked.
“It sounded like a grunt,” said the metal boy.
“Charles, go check it out!”
Gautier turned back toward the cellar, only to see her leaving as Charles jerked his head to the left and narrowed his slit red eyes at Gautier and Leroux.
Kill The Beast Page 2
