by Jim C. Hines
Headstrong had picked a good spot for an ambush. There were few trees here for Shroud to hide behind. To one side was a steep drop. To the other, a wall of rock and dirt. The ledge was perhaps ten feet wide, enough room for her to fight, but minimising the advantage of Shroud’s greater agility.
“Careful of this one,” said one of the noggins. “He’s a Conclave assassin.”
Headstrong snorted. “He won’t be the first I’ve killed.”
Had the Conclave sent others to deal with Headstrong, only to fail? Or had the ogre targeted one of the Conclave’s own, and that was the reason for the blood order?
Focus!
Headstrong charged. Her power was in hand-to-hand fighting. Shroud was a distance killer. He had to keep out of reach long enough to bring her down. He grabbed an unlit bomb and hurled it at her face. She blocked it automatically, and the pot shattered in a cloud of foul-smelling powders and chemicals. Shroud knew from experience how they would burn the eyes, nose, and throat. Her eyes would water, rendering her effectively blind, and woe unto her if she tried to rub her face before washing her hands.
He switched back to his bow and put an arrow into her leg. He fired the next at her foot, hoping to pin her in place, but the arrowhead failed to penetrate her boot.
“He’s right in front of us,” one of the heads shouted. Tears streamed down its eyes as well, but it hadn’t taken as much of the bomb’s powder as Headstrong. The ogre leaped forwards and swung. The axe blade nicked his bow.
Shroud cursed. The wood creaked and cracked when he tested the string. He tossed the bow away. What good did it do to blind an ogre when she had other heads to see for her? He yanked a sharpened metal star from a hidden pocket on his sleeve, waited for that noggin to try to talk again, and hurled the star into its open mouth.
Forget the noggins. Take down the ogre!
“Humans are so fragile,” said Headstrong. “One squeeze and your little heads just pop off and die. Too bad. You’d’ve made a good noggin.” She advanced, her axe slashing to and fro, following the guidance of her remaining noggins. There was no pattern to her attacks. She was deliberately random, making it impossible for him to anticipate and take advantage.
He threw another knife, sticking this one in her right thigh. She didn’t seem to notice. Her size was too great an advantage in a fight like this. He had to turn it into a weakness.
He pulled a thick punching dagger with his left hand and a hooked blade on a chain with his right. The chain blade was a particularly challenging weapon he had acquired down in Crowsgate. Fling the blade correctly and the chain would slide between the finger and thumb, allowing you to snap it back before it fully extended, or to manipulate it into a complex series of arcs. A master could slit a target’s throat from around a corner. Smaller hooks at the base of the blade allowed it to be used as a makeshift grappling hook for getting over walls and fences.
So far, he had discovered thirty-one ways to kill a man from ten feet away.
“There’s one thing I can’t decide,” he said as Headstrong moved towards him. “Do I count you as a single kill, or do I tally up each noggin separately?”
He moved to the edge and glanced down. There were trees a short distance away, but the ground closest to the cliff was barren. The drop was about sixty feet, give or take. He studied Headstrong, calculating how her size and weight would affect the size of the blood spatter.
Headstrong approached more cautiously this time. She bled from dozens of wounds, and at least one of her noggins looked to be dead.
“Watch the chain blade,” said the head resting near Headstrong’s left armpit. “Could be poisoned.”
Only an idiot uses poison on a chain blade. Too difficult to control. One wrong move and you’ve killed yourself with your own weapon. Who wants to risk that kind of embarrassment?
“No Conclave assassin would be fool enough to poison a chain blade,” snapped the one-eyed noggin, echoing Shroud’s thoughts.
“What’s your name?” asked Shroud.
“Headstrong.” The ogre’s eyes were red, but her vision had cleared enough to follow Shroud’s movements.
Shroud chuckled. “Not you. The noggin. She’s the only one worth talking to.”
“Night Axe.” In addition to the eye, Night Axe was also missing most of an ear.
“How did Headstrong manage to kill you?”
“She didn’t,” said Night Axe. “I was my sister’s noggin ’til a Conclave killer named Peril came along. Killed her and took me as a trophy. Kept me for years, ’til Yog helped old Headstink kill him.”
With that, the pieces began sliding into place. The Conclave wouldn’t bother to avenge an assassin who got himself offed by an ogre. Such failures were an embarrassment to the Conclave’s masters, who had proclaimed that allowing yourself to be killed was a crime punishable by death.
But how much had Night Axe seen and heard in her time with a Conclave assassin? How many secrets had she learned? No wonder the Conclave wanted Headstrong and her noggins eliminated.
Headstrong roared and jumped forwards, her axe swinging down on a path that would separate his hand from his arm. Shroud jerked back, but twisting out of the way left him off balance. Headstrong backhanded him on the side of the head.
Shroud’s foot slipped off the edge.
He didn’t try to stop his fall. Instead, he whipped the chain blade at the ogre’s leg. He deliberately overshot, so the chain hit her leg below the knee. The blade whipped around and crossed the chain. One of the barbs hooked tight.
His dagger fell away. He grabbed the chain with both hands. It jerked taut, slamming him against the cliff side.
Headstrong shouted again, this time from pain. Shroud braced both feet against the cliff and pulled hard. An enormous, warty foot came into view.
He had intended to drive the punching dagger into the cliff and use it as a makeshift handhold while the ogre plummeted to her death. Then he would pull himself back onto the ledge and make his way safely down to retrieve proof of the kill.
Always have a plan. Always be prepared for that plan to go to hell at any given moment.
Headstrong’s entire right leg hung over the edge now.
“Forget the stupid axe,” yelled one of her noggins. “Grab something! Anything!”
There were small trees and shrubs up there. If she got hold of one, she might be able to shake him free.
Shroud let go with his right hand and retrieved the last of his throwing stars. He extended both legs against the cliff to get a better angle, then hurled the star directly into the ogre’s backside.
Headstrong howled and tumbled over the edge.
Shroud pushed away from the cliff as he fell, releasing the chain and launching himself towards the trees he had seen below.
There was no chance of a controlled landing. Wind rushed past his ears. Smaller branches whipped his body, and larger ones battered his bones. Others broke away from the trees, their jagged ends tearing clothes and skin. The earth and sky spun around him. He saw the ground rushing up and had just enough time to exhale and contort his body, hoping to roll with the landing.
He heard the impact quite clearly, which struck him as odd. Everything went white. There was no pain. Why wasn’t there pain? A beating like that should have—
Wait for it.
He didn’t have the breath to scream. All he could manage was a pained whimper as his body registered the abuse it had suffered. He spat blood and pine needles. At least two teeth had come loose. Blood dribbled from his nose. When he tried to focus on the tree towering over him, his eyes couldn’t decide which of the two identical trees wavering past one another was real.
Take a slow, careful breath. Check for broken ribs or a punctured lung.
It felt like he might have dislocated a rib or two in the back, but thankfully, he didn’t feel any stabbing pain in his chest. He tested his arms and fingers, then carefully pushed himself into a seated position. Two fingers on his right hand were bro
ken, and the knuckles were scraped bloody. But considering the height of the fall, he had been lucky.
Wait until you try to get out of bed tomorrow morning.
Headstrong hadn’t been so fortunate. She’d landed a short distance away. All that mass and muscle had worked against her, and she hadn’t managed to break her fall on the way down. Shroud was amazed she was still breathing. Considering the odd angle of her neck and the blood bubbling between her lips, that wouldn’t continue much longer.
Slowly and carefully, Shroud untwisted himself from his cloak and stood. A broken branch as thick as his thumb jutted from his left thigh, but the leg would still support his weight. He hobbled towards Headstrong and collapsed on the ground beside her, careful to stay well out of reach. He didn’t think she was a threat anymore, but he hadn’t survived this long by making assumptions.
Her axe sat in the dirt about ten feet away. Headstrong had landed on several of her noggins. If the impact hadn’t finished them off, they’d suffocate soon enough. Shroud couldn’t have rolled her off them if he’d wanted to. Only one noggin, Night Axe, appeared conscious. She just blinked up at him, her bloodied eyes crossed.
Shroud’s arrow was still stuck through Headstrong’s nose. He found that oddly funny. The fall had broken the ogre, but his arrow had survived intact.
Night Axe’s eyes tried to focus on Shroud. She licked her lips and said, “Nice move with the chain blade. Who taught you that?”
“Desperation.”
Night Axe snorted, spraying blood down her chin. “Good teacher.”
Headstrong’s breath echoed wetly in her chest. Shroud had seen enough deaths to know she had only minutes left. Maybe less.
“Peril was a good master,” said Night Axe. “Made sure I got fed. Let me watch plenty of violence. And he didn’t smell half as bad as an ogre. Then Yog came along, forced me to serve this clod. Headstrong was tough. Yog needed us to make her smart.”
“ ‘Smart’ being a relative term.”
“She said if I didn’t help her, she’d have me tied to a stick like poor Scratcher. Only I wouldn’t be scratching. My new name would be Wiper.”
“I might have broken too,” Shroud admitted. Headstrong’s chest had stopped moving. The ogre was dead.
“Go ahead and finish me,” Night Axe said. “I’m dying anyway. But at least I outlived Headstrong.”
Shroud gripped the stick embedded in his leg, clenched his jaw, and twisted it free. One hand clamped the wound to slow the bleeding. With the other, he tore a strip from his shirt and wadded it into a ball. He jammed the rag into the wound, then tore a second strip and knotted the makeshift bandage into place. He’d need to cut himself a walking stick to make it back to Grayrock.
He limped over to retrieve Headstrong’s weapon. One edge of the axe was badly chipped from the impact, but the other remained sharp and smooth.
The weight of the axe made his shoulder cry out in pain, but that same weight made it the weapon most likely to penetrate an ogre’s skull.
“There’s six gold in Headstrong’s belt pouch. They’re yours if you’ll do me a favour.”
“I’ve been known to give discounts in the past,” said Shroud. “As a professional courtesy.”
“Yog took me away from a good life.” Night Axe closed her eyes. “Make sure she dies, will you?”
“It will be my pleasure,” he said, and brought the axe down.
CHAPTER 23
WINTER
The hut lay on its side. Bottles and herbs and half-carved dolls had fallen onto the wall. Fortunately, the table and other heavy furniture appeared to be secured to the floor. Otherwise it would have crushed them.
Winter could feel the hut trying futilely to crawl with its stilted legs. She heard Inga shouting through the broken door frame.
To either side, Sterling and Tipple tried to right themselves. Blue sat overhead, perched on the edge of the desk. Yog was struggling to open a storage compartment in the wall, a task made more difficult by the pile of knickknacks and other junk blocking the door.
“Winter!” Sterling squirmed onto his side. “Are you all right?”
“I’ve had better days,” she admitted.
“This is your final chance,” said Yog. “Serve me, and become stronger than you ever imagined. Or refuse, and die with your friends.”
Winter nodded and leaned back. “I’ll take death, thank you.”
“You’re a child,” Yog said, her words dripping with disdain. “You can’t possibly understand—”
“I understand that no matter how powerful your Riders might be, they don’t seem to have much fun.” Her arms and legs were still tied. She looked around, hoping perhaps a knife had fallen among the other clutter. “Well, aside from Skye and her cape. I wouldn’t mind being able to fly around like that.”
Something slammed into the side of the hut.
“Look at the redcap,” Winter continued. “Does he look happy to you? Your Riders don’t even get uniforms. If I ever turned to evil, I’d do it in style. Black furs trimmed in gold, a tall crown of gold and crystal, and a truly wicked-looking sceptre. The whole works.”
“Forget her,” Kas yelled, digging himself out of a pile of salt from a broken pot. “They’re attacking the hut.”
Yog scowled, her lips peeling back from her tarnished teeth. She grabbed the cabinet door with both hands and heaved it open.
The cabinet was larger than it should have been. Yog hauled an iron cauldron out as if it weighed nothing. She grabbed Kas in one hand and climbed into the cauldron. “Blue, guard the hut and watch the Heroes. If one of them tries anything, kill the others.”
The cauldron lurched into the air and hovered briefly in the middle of the hut. Yog crouched until only the tangled nest of her hair was visible. The cauldron tilted sideways and shot up like a stone from a catapult, cracking the door frame on the way out.
“Where’s she off to, do you think?” Winter asked.
“Probably to kill Ben,” said Sterling. “She turned him human while you were napping.”
“We can’t have that. Not after we worked so hard to rescue him.” Winter stretched her shoulders. “Who else is ready to get out of this dump?”
Blue jumped down and pointed a knife at Tipple’s throat. “Yog said no!”
The hut was still spinning though it had slowed somewhat when Yog left. Blue wobbled in place, and the knife’s tip came dangerously close to Tipple’s face.
“Watch it, redcap!”
A collection of glass pots spilled down on them, releasing what could have been anything from rare spices to powdered bull parts.
“Take it easy, Blue,” said Winter. “You don’t want to hurt him.”
Blue cocked his head to the side.
“Right, maybe you do,” she conceded. “The thing is, if you so much as scratch either of my friends, I’ll freeze the blood in your veins until your heart shatters like glass.” She pursed her lips and blew frost over his nose.
Blue grimaced and rubbed his face.
“You told me you wanted your freedom,” said Sterling. “You can choose to keep living in fear, a slave forced to hunt and kill your own kind. Or you can help us punish the one who did this to you.”
“Yog will never let you be free,” Winter added. “You’ll never be able to rejoin your people. Never be able to explore, to see the world and spread your mischief wherever you choose.”
Blue stared at the knife in his hand. “Free or flee or kill the three.”
She blew a puff of cold over the ropes at her wrists, turning them brittle. Her sweat turned to ice that clung to her skin. She flexed her arms, and the ropes snapped. “I can’t promise we’ll survive if we go after Yog. I can’t promise victory. But I can promise you something even better.”
Blue leaned closer.
Winter winked. “I give you my word that helping us will be much more fun.”
Slowly, the redcap began to giggle.
Winter jumped to grab the brok
en doorway. She pulled herself up onto the still-spinning hut and searched the sky until she spotted Yog swooping about in her flying cauldron, flinging enchanted bones at the remaining Heroes. She seemed to be focusing her assault on Rook, who was crouched just inside the gate. Inga stood atop the rubble by the old tower. Leech and Glory were on the wall to the south, and both looked ready to collapse. There was no sign of Shroud. She hoped he hadn’t fallen.
Winter blasted ice at the flailing legs of the hut, freezing them to the ground. Once it stopped moving, she jumped down and made her way to the edge of the river.
Crossbow bolts pinged off Yog’s cauldron with no effect. Bones and blue fire poured down. With a curse Winter could hear even from this distance, Rook wrenched open the gate. He, Greta, and a boy jumped into the water flowing out of Grayrock just before a new assault shattered the makeshift platform where they’d been resting.
It took her a moment to recognise the boy as Ben. She had only seen him as a doll, but the spiked mess of his hair was unmistakable.
They were exposed and vulnerable, but Yog didn’t seem to care. She swooped back towards the hut. “Blue! The children have fled. Grayrock is lost. Quickly, bring me the flesh of a Hero!”
The redcap poked his head out of the door. The sun silhouetted his cap as he climbed carefully out of the hut. The broken door frame was at a steep angle, and a misstep would send him tumbling into the dirt. He jumped down, arms spinning wildly.
“Bring me their flesh!” Yog shouted again.
Instead, Blue turned around, dropped his pants, and waved his naked arse in Yog’s direction, laughing maniacally the whole time.
Winter couldn’t see Yog’s face from here, but the outrage and fury in her cry echoed across the lake.
Sterling and Tipple were climbing out after Blue. Yog retreated towards the quarry. The remaining bones flew from the hut to orbit her flying cauldron.
“The hut!” Inga shouted. “That’s where she’s hidden her life.”
“We know that,” Tipple yelled back. “We’ve not found it yet.”
“Not inside the hut. The hut itself!”
Winter’s smile grew. “Hey, Blue! How would you like to help Sterling and Tipple with a little home demolition?”
