The baron’s face went from horror to rage, and a moment later his delicate fingers tore open the assassin’s skull like ripe fruit. The lance of iron impaling the baron disintegrated, and he stumbled to his left, his hand falling on the shoulder of Black-Hand. “Black-Hand, I need—”
Black-Hand sank one of his iron daggers into the baron’s side. “Ta die.”
Before Black-Hand could stab the baron with his opposite dagger, Al’rashal’s hooves collided with the redcap’s face and sent him tumbling along the floor.
The Baron of Wings fell to one knee just as Urkjorman reached his side. He looked up at the minotaur and vomited blood. “Get me out of here.”
The baron collapsed into a pool of his own blood, and for the first time in a thousand years, the sun continued to set.
Chapter Three
And through the Woods
The shock of the baron collapsing into his own pool of blood was so much it almost stopped Al’rashal’s swing. The momentary hesitation was enough for the assassin to deflect her sword thrust and sweep at her legs. She rose to her hind legs and kicked the assassin in the face with a forelimb, sending the man tumbling backward to the sound of a shattering jaw. The other assassin launched two more bolts of blood at her. One she ducked, and the other she blocked with her shield, the force of the impact rocking her arm but not slowing her stride. She swept her sword up at the assassin, who rolled aside and beneath her, but before he could capitalize, she stomped her feet. Al heard a grunt of pain, and the assassin rolled clear, holding his shoulder.
“Stop! Stop!” shouted Black-Hand, picking himself up from the ground where Al had kicked him to. “The deed is done. No need ta fight more.”
Al kept her weapon readied but let the assassins back away. She cast a glance to Urkjorman, who was kneeling at the baron’s side, finger to his throat. The minotaur shook his head. “He still lives.”
Black-Hand spat on the floor in disgust. “He’ll be dead soon. Whatever the baron promised you, it ain’t worth ya life. Just put him down and go.”
“And you’ll just let us walk away?” asked Al incredulously.
Black-Hand’s eyes were darting about the room as the Iron Guard drew weapons. “I control the guard; I’ll control the kingdom. I can afford ta be gracious. Trust me, you don’t want ta cast ya fate with the baron, especially as—” But his words were cut off by a howl of pain as an arrow sank into his left shoulder.
“For the baron!” shouted a sprite as he fired another iron-tipped arrow at the redcap. Black-Hand sprang backward and destroyed the incoming arrow with a sweep of his dagger. Emboldened soldiers loyal to the baron charged him, while others supporting the coup tried to intercept.
“Looks like your hold on the guard and the kingdom isn’t so assured,” said Al with a smile. The remaining water carriers were trying to push through the press of loyalists but were making no progress. Al turned to her husband. “Now what? We could still give them the baron.”
The Baron of Wings responded with a cough and a ragged gasp of air. “Get me … out.”
Urk nodded and laid the baron on Al’s back. “Even if we get out, where do we go?”
“To … to the Mourning Field. Then … then the Old Aerie.”
Al looked to her husband.
“Good enough,” replied the minotaur. He turned and charged toward the east wall, caring not whether friend or foe was in his path. Al followed him, hoping the baron retained the strength to hold on. The door ahead was turned into kindling as her husband barreled through it, and in the halls beyond, they found nothing but people fleeing in panic or looking on in horror. She could hear Black-Hand ordering people to follow, but the only signs of pursuit were curses. They made it outside, and Al was struck by how different the world was with the sun continuing past the horizon. The orange rays were turning violet, and stars she’d never seen in the Twilight Kingdom were appearing in the sky above.
“The dryads,” groaned the baron.
“Already they come,” responded Urkjorman as the creatures pulled away from their trees.
“Stop. I need a moment,” said the baron.
“I don’t think we have the time,” said Al.
“I need it.”
Al nodded to her husband. The minotaur stopped the charge and positioned himself between her and the castle doors. The dryads reached for the baron’s bleeding body, and after he gave a weak smile, she passed him to them. Almost a dozen of them surrounded him. However, they did not look on him with hunger, as they had Borden, but pity and fear.
“My little girls,” said the baron as one took his hand. “I must ask much of you. Forgive me.”
Urk grunted as an arrow stabbed into him and another sank into a tree. The dryads looked to one another, seeming to confer silently among themselves, before one nodded. The others looked immensely saddened, and the first clamped her mouth to one of the baron’s open wounds. Al could see the creature’s flesh flush with life, and then see a creeping blackness flow through her skin. She turned blue, then black. Her hair wilted, her skin dried, and finally, her eyes turned stone gray. She remained petrified for a moment and then blew away like ash in the wind.
The baron sat up. He looked healthier, but there was still a tinge of gray to his flesh. Another dryad opened her mouth, but the baron pushed her away. “No. You have given me enough.”
They wailed in lament.
“Give me now your fury. Avenge yourselves upon my pursuers.”
The remaining dryads rose, some with tears in their eyes. Their fingers grew into long claws, and their mouths opened to reveal rows of sharp teeth. With a hiss, they rushed forward.
“Come,” said the baron. “They will buy us time, but we must away.”
“Should we not help them?” asked Urkjorman as he lumbered over.
The baron shook his head. “They have fury, but the guard have iron. They will fall and die. We must flee while time allows.”
Al’rashal let the baron climb onto her back. “Which way?”
He leaned forward, practically draping himself against her to whisper into her ear. His voice sent a shiver rolling down her spine as he answered. “North, out of the valley. There you will find a path. That shall lead us to the Old Aerie.”
“What’s there?”
“The origin of my power. A place that may grant me the strength to rid myself of this contamination.”
A wail of pain split the air as one of the dryads was run through with a spear.
“Let us be fast about it, hmm?” cooed the baron.
The last bit of the sun was finally dipping past the western horizon by the time the trees thinned, and the air cooled. Al’rashal wasn’t certain, but it felt like the sun was setting more slowly than it should have, but it was hard to say what the sun should be doing in the realm of the fairies. The scent of water reached her first, cool and cold like a mountain stream. It made her realize how thirsty she was, and how tired. Even as comfortable as it was to have the baron draped across her, it was still tiring to carry him all this way. Then the sound reached her, the sound of a great river racing over rocks. Her husband swore, and she picked up speed to crest the ridge and see what troubled him.
She swore too.
Half a mile or so away was a river that came out of the mountains and crossed their path. It didn’t look too wide, but it was moving fast, and the froth hid depths that could have been one or a dozen feet deep.
She shrugged, rousing the baron, who had fallen asleep as they pushed on. “You didn’t tell us there was a river!”
The baron mumbled incoherently before responding. “Apologies, it must have slipped my mind.”
“How could you forget something like that?”
The baron lifted his seven wings by way of explanation. “It has never before troubled me.”
She wanted to punch him in his gorgeous face. “Is there a crossing?”
“I should think so. There are little shepherd people on one side, and little not-s
hepherd people that buy their meats and wool on the other.”
“Which way?”
The baron peered at the river, propping himself up on her shoulders to get a better vantage point, and used one of his wings to shield his eyes. “Downriver, as it widens. That is where the little people congregate in their little homes.”
Urkjorman was peering downriver when soft footfalls pulled her ears backward. “Get off me,” Al commanded of the baron.
“What? I’m still—”
“Now.”
The wind shifted, dragging her mane forward and carrying the scents of tree, flower, and anger. The sound of footfalls sped up and stopped. Al kicked, planting her rear hooves into the chest of whoever had leaped at the baron, and pitched them backward. The baron tumbled to the ground as she came about, sword raised.
The figure rose from the low shrubbery and snarled, his face seeming a mix of something feline and something like an elf. His fingers ended in sharp claws, which he seemed ready to use.
Urk dragged the baron behind him as Al edged closer to the attacker.
The creature raced forward, keeping low to the ground, arms wide. Al sprang forward, closing the distance between them in a heartbeat and almost bringing her hooves down on his skull. The elf-cat thing rolled aside and came up before Al could recover from her leap. Pain ran up her flank as the creature’s claws tore through her armor and flesh. She rotated, battering him with her flank and sending him rolling along the ground. He came up, and she put a rear hoof into his jaw, which sent him spiraling to the earth. He pulled back before she could finish him with a swing of her sword.
Al pressed her momentary advantage, swinging rapidly with her sword to keep the creature dancing backward. He hopped back, planting his clawed feet onto a tree, then launched forward. He collided with Al, driving the centaur back several steps, but she’d gotten her shield up in time to absorb the brunt of the blow. A claw sank into her shoulder, and he tried to sink his teeth into her neck, but she lifted the shield just in time. She dropped the sword—it was too long for such close combat—and grabbed his opposite wrist. She pulled, wrenching him free, and slammed him into a tree, snapping branches and bones. Blood erupted from his lips, but he had enough sense to slip aside before her hooves came down.
The creature rose and wiped the blood from his mouth before looking past Al to her husband and the baron. He spat on the earth, then turned and ran.
“Al, get him! He mustn’t reach more pursuers!”
She nodded, kicked her sword back into her hand, and charged through the brush after the attacker.
The creature was running on all fours, racing ahead more like a large cat than an elf, and was quite fast, but she was quickly closing. He must have realized this, because he raced up a tree and into the thick canopy. With the sunset and the sky growing dark, the canopy turned into a blur of grays and greens impossible for her eyes to focus on.
Al stopped and focused on her other senses. Her ears twitched left and right as she listened to the rustling of trees, the scraping of branches, hunting for something out of place, something unnatural. She was certain she could hear his labored breath above and to the right. Even so, getting him down would be difficult. “I can smell your blood—” she turned, looking up at where he probably was “—and hear you breathe.”
There was a sharp intake of air, and Al smiled. She hurled the sword into the branches overhead.
The creature howled as it leaped from the trees. The sword had gone wide, cutting through branch and leaf almost a foot from where the attacker hid.
As she had planned.
Al’rashal lifted her shield with both arms, slamming the heavy steel disk into the descending skull of her attacker. The blood that washed her face and chest told her he was dead even before the corpse hit the ground. She kicked the tree to dislodge her sword and carried it and the corpse back to Urkjorman and the baron.
Al dropped the body before her husband, and he picked over it.
“Anything?” she asked the baron.
The Baron of Wings came forward, somehow looking both weak and magnificent. “No one I know, if that is your asking.”
“No symbols, no tattoos,” said Urk before opening the creature’s mouth. “Looks like a lykin.”
“That explains why he didn’t turn back into an elf after he died,” agreed Al. “I thought he was using magic, not tapping into his werewolf ancestry.”
“Tiger,” corrected the baron. “Or some other massive feline. His teeth would have been larger and his claws smaller were he descended of canine.”
“Water carrier assassins and now lykin hunters,” mused Al’rashal. “How hard is Black-Hand trying to kill you?”
The baron responded with a few motes of laughter, which ended when he allowed himself to cough up a drop of blood. “Apparently, not hard enough. No doubt he has promised great riches for my head. If he takes my throne, he will have my coffers, so he can promise a great deal.”
Urk turned from the body and looked downriver. “How far to those shepherds you mentioned?”
The baron gazed west. “Five or six minutes by flight, so that much in miles.”
“They’ll be on us long before then. Does the river narrow to the east?”
The baron nodded. “Yes, it becomes deep and quite fast but perhaps only one or two hundred feet wide.”
“All right, east then, and ford the river,” decided Urkjorman.
“You sure about that, Urk? I hate deep water.”
“Have faith, Al. We’ll make it.”
“Such confidence, it is positively invigorating,” said the baron with a smile.
“Good,” responded Al. “Because you’re walking. I need to be ready for another attack.”
The baron curtsied. “Of course. What must be, must be.”
Chapter Four
River Crossing
Urkjorman released an aggravated sigh as his eyes tried to adjust to the growing darkness. The sky was a dark slate of thick clouds and tiny stars that bathed everything in shadow and made navigating the slick stones of the river shore treacherous. To their right, the river was a slash of rolling darkness, more heard than seen. Ahead he could just make out what appeared to be a great waterfall.
“You sure we can manage this, in this darkness?” asked Al’rashal.
“I’d hoped the light would hold out longer, but we can make our own.”
“Sorry,” apologized the Baron of Wings. “My hold on the sky slips more with each moment that passes.”
Urk shrugged. “Why still hold on to it at all?”
“You do not know this land. There are things that lurk in the deepest dark. Without my hold, there would not be even stars or moon above, and those things would be loose once more.”
Urk looked up. “With clouds so thick, the stars and moon will do us little good.”
“That I may be able to do something about.” The baron aimed one hand at the sky and drew his fingers closed as though he were grasping something. One by one, light suffused each of his seven wings, and he pulled. Slowly, then with building momentum, the clouds peeled from the sky, dragged to the horizon to wash the land in the cool light of moon and stars.
The baron collapsed into a fit of coughing as the light permeating his wings faded away. Al helped him back to his feet, but even with the coughing over, he looked weaker than before. “Will that suffice?”
The river looked like a frothing band of silver in the moonlight, and the darkness had been banished to only the thickest of places. Urk was about to give his thanks when he saw several figures revealed by the sudden light. “More lykin! Go! To the base of the falls! Go!”
With the element of surprise lost, the lykin rushed forward, most loping on all fours, and a few charging with weapons drawn. Al pulled the baron onto her back and ran ahead. Urk followed, but the first of the lykin were soon about him. One slashed at his thigh, drawing a thin line of blood, and another leaped on him to sink teeth into Urk’s shoulder. T
he minotaur tore the lykin from his back and cast him into the river before swinging his ax at the second, who nimbly dodged aside. Another ran past him, barely leaping over Urk’s swing to charge his wife. He wanted to race to her side, but he would have to trust her to keep the baron safe as more of the creatures caught up.
Urk drew on the divine radiance gifted to him by his god and poured it into his ax. He swept the weapon about him, leaving a trail of lightning in his wake that lashed out at everything and left three of the lykin convulsing in pain. On the return stroke, he decapitated one and kicked another back down the slope toward his fellows. Now Urk had a better idea of how many they would have to fight, almost a dozen more, though it wasn’t the numbers that alarmed him, it was the figure at the rear.
At the rear of the line of attackers was a person wrapped in various beast hides and wearing the skull of some massive predator as a helmet. He carried no weapons save a gnarled wooden staff adorned with teeth and topped by a silvery stone the size of a man’s fist. Even from here Urk felt the figure exude magic and menace. He was probably some kind of shaman, and Urk had no desire to challenge the whole pack and its master together.
Pulling a small measure of radiance into his voice, Urk roared, causing many of the coming lykin to cower in fear. Behind him a body hit the ground as his wife severed an arm, and there was a splash as the baron pitched another into the fast-moving currents. One of the lykin, who was unaffected by Urk’s magic, charged forward, swinging a hammer almost six feet long. Their weapons clashed with a blow so great it staggered Urk and sent him stumbling back. The lykin brought the weapon around again, much faster than such a heavy weapon should have been used, but this time Urk was ready and struck back, causing the lykin to reel back. Urk gave ground, edging back to his wife and the baron before the warrior charged in again. Urk caught the next swing on the haft of his ax and twisted, drawing the warrior off-balance and onto his knee. Air and spit flew from the warrior’s mouth, and Urk followed by punching him with enough force to fell trees. The warrior tumbled to the ground, rolling to rest at the feet of the man adorned with bones. The other lykin pulled back to their apparent leader, and Urk let them.
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