by M. C. Aquila
Rust, James thought. It’s probably rust or…
They both looked up. There was a face in the darkness, and outlined in the firelight were a pair of shiny eyes. Before James could even process what was happening, Iain shoved him out of the way.
Pitching forward, James caught himself with his hands, the rough stone scraping his palms. He rolled over; Iain stood, axe brandished. A feral roar sounded, and a stout figure jumped down from its perch in the ruined stairwell.
The girls woke up, Deirdre rising to her feet, taking a defensive stance, and Alvey backpedaling right into the wall.
“Another dwarf?” Deirdre shrieked, staring at it wide-eyed.
“I can smell the blood on it.” Alvey gasped.
In the light stood a humanoid creature with long, apelike arms and a squat, muscular body. He had sallow skin, but the end of his scraggly white beard and nose were stained crimson. On its head, it wore a long, pointed hat that was dripping red with blood. In one of its claw-tipped hands was a rope that was stained dark, like the Fachan’s chain.
“It’s a Rad Cep—a Red Cap!” James shouted hoarsely.
At James’s exclamation, the Red Cap took a step toward them. Iain raised his axe in front of him, stepping between the creature and the group. James grabbed his pack with shaking hands, dropping it a few times before he produced the Unseelie book from inside; he searched for any information on the Red Cap.
“The cap. The boy understands. He knows”—the Red Cap peered around at James and sputtered out the words, pitched high with desperation one moment and rumbling deep with malice the next—“I must fill the cap. Do you understand, boy? My cap mustn’t run dry. It must flow even if it’s a thrall’s blood. Blood must flow!”
James leafed through the worn pages frantically; when he got to the page on Red Caps, he saw a hauntingly rendered pen-and-ink drawing of a man hanging from a tree by his feet, gouts of blood draining from his neck, with a Red Cap seated underneath.
“A single drop of blood smeared is enough to alert a Red Cap and send it into a frenzy after the smell…”
In the illustration, there was a patch of white in the corner of the Unseelie creature’s hat; Red Caps needed constant blood to fill the cap to survive.
That’s what the rope is for, James thought as his heart pounded in his ears. He pried his eyes away, dropped the book, and searched the ground frantically for anything that could be used as a weapon.
“Blood’s sure gonna flow if you take one more step,” Iain ground out. “I guarantee it’ll be yours.”
The Red Cap eyed them for what felt like a minute with his shiny, dark gaze. Then he raised his rope. “It is a risk I shall take!”
The rope went sailing through the air, and as it did, it arced and twisted like a snake, alive, seeking something to wrap itself around. Iain dodged it, jumping back. Then, letting out a shout, he ran forward with the axe raised.
Iain swung the axe heavily, the twin blades making the air sing as they sliced through it. The Red Cap leaped back in alarm, just barely escaping. But before Iain was close enough to strike another time, the Red Cap swung the rope again. It lashed around Iain’s ankle, and the Red Cap tugged, sending him sprawling on his back like he’d had a rug pulled out from under him.
While Iain was momentarily stunned, the Red Cap dragged him across the floor by the rope with ease, the weight of him nothing to a creature as strong as him.
“Cut the rope!” James yelled.
Iain dug the fingers of his axe-free hand and jammed the heels of his boots into the crooks of the stone, halting the momentum. He had about three feet of rope left before he reached the Red Cap.
“I’m going to string you up and drain you dry!” The Red Cap hissed. “Then I will move on to the rest.”
Iain shouted, his voice strained, “James, Deirdre—take Alvey. Now! If we make it to the woods, there’s less of a chance he’ll be able to catch us—”
But Deirdre was pale, focusing hard on the Red Cap, her eyes narrowed. She was whispering under her breath, asking for the ground to shift, telling the ancient stone that was mined from mountains to move.
She’s going to use magic! James managed to move and fall back beside Alvey, who was clinging to her chair’s handles, deathly pale.
Iain reared back and slammed the axe down onto the rope. There was a metallic clang as it met the stone floor. But the rope was not severed. He tried again and again, but none of the blows did anything to even fray it.
All the while, the Red Cap laughed. He was toying with them, letting them fight. He was going to kill them all. That same, helpless feeling washed over James as it had in the cave, but he was not about to stand around like last time.
The Red Cap tugged hard on the rope, and Iain lost his purchase on the ground and was dragged toward him.
A single drop of blood! James looked at his hand, flexing it, resolved. That’s what the book said. That’s what we need!
James turned to Deirdre. “I have an idea, but I don’t have time to explain it to you—”
“James, not now!”
“Give me your knife.” James held out his hand expectantly. “Deirdre, please!”
But Deirdre just shook her head as her whispers with the earth turned to pleading. The floor began to vibrate under James’s feet. But she wasn’t going to be fast enough.
“Deirdre”—James grabbed her arm—“if you’d just trust me!”
“James, please!” Deirdre turned toward him, dropping her arms and her focus.
All at once the ground shifted under them, the stones shooting up from the floor and grinding together. They were both sent toppling over in a mess of limbs, James landing on his elbow hard.
“Oy!” A figure appeared at the threshold from the night, the firelight glinting off the sword in his hand. “What’s all this then?”
James and Deirdre sat up, groaning, and saw the ragged, pale figure cloaked in mist and moonlight.
It’s the Shambly Man!
The man continued. “Are you a bunch of incompetent highwaymen or…”
Spotting the Red Cap, the figure stepped forward into the light, revealing a ginger man with a sturdy build and a full beard, sword in hand. He was dressed in odd, dirty clothing.
The Red Cap had stopped dragging Iain to stare at the man, and Iain was tilting his head upside down for a glimpse. Beside James, Alvey made a face and whispered something about gin.
“Oh, I get it. Your cap’s running low.” The man sneered. “You need blood, and these kids might do it for you, right? I get it.”
The Red Cap snickered at him, his dark eyes twinkling. “You’re just going to let them bleed out? How amusing.”
“Eh.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. “I’m afraid not.”
The man lunged toward the Red Cap, just avoiding stepping on Iain’s chest as he jumped over him. Then he said, “Hold still, lad” and swung his sword down, severing the rope that bound Iain’s ankle with one swift strike.
Iain stood, his eyes wide and dazed. He snapped out of his astonishment and flanked the man, his axe brandished.
But the man raised a hand to stop him, saying, “Stand down, lad. You’ll get yourself killed.”
The whites of the Red Cap’s eyes shone in the pale moonlight, disbelieving as he beheld the severed rope dangling from his hand. Then, with a roar, the creature lunged at the man, lashing out wildly with long, sharp talons.
The man tried to skip backward out of the way, but he was not quick enough. There was a sickening cracking sound, like snapping a branch underfoot, as the claws plunged into the man’s side. The man let out a low, keening groan, slumping against the wall to his right. The Red Cap pulled his hand free, the sharp fingers coming out coated in thick, dark blood.
Iain let out a strangled shout, then rushed forward and slashed at the Red Cap with his axe, delivering the blade deep into the creature’s arm, brownish blood dribbling from the wound. As Iain wrenched the blade out to swing again, the creat
ure struck out backhanded with one clawed hand, grazing Iain’s cheek. Hissing, the creature leaped back, keeping an eye on Iain while turning his focus back to the injured swordsman.
But when the Red Cap went to wrap the rope around the man’s neck like a noose, the fibers split and fell away squirming like many worms before disintegrating into dust in the creature’s hands.
“How have you destroyed my rope?” The Red Cap bellowed. “That isn’t possible! What kind of blade do you wield?”
“You really want to know?” The man straightened, one hand pressed to his side. But whether or not the man was going to answer, the Red Cap never heard.
In just three slashes with his blade, the man felled and beheaded the Red Cap. Two slashes for the neck and one that missed and went into the wall behind him as the man swore loudly. The cap fell off the creature’s head and flaked away into brown, dried blood.
Then, in one solid kick, the man launched the corpse of the Red Cap out of the castle.
The man, breathing hard, the sound watery, turned to face them. One hand was pressed hard to his side, blood seeping through his fingers, and he was perspiring, face taut with pain. He met Iain’s gaze and shakily pointed his sword at him.
“Now,” the man said, his voice like gravel. “What are you kids doing here?”
Just as Iain was about to speak, holding up one hand in a placating gesture, the man’s eyes rolled back into his head and he fell over flat on his back on the ground.
* * *
Please don’t be dead. Please don’t die.
Iain dropped his axe the moment the swordsman fell and knelt beside him. He knew he had to work quickly to stop the bleeding, but he also knew a vital organ might have been punctured. There had been so much blood gushing between his fingers.
“Is he dead?” James asked flatly from behind him.
“Just… just get my med kit from my pack,” Iain snapped.
Iain went to apply pressure to the wound, peeling back the wet, sticky layer of the man’s shirt from his side. He gaped at the scars that decorated his torso, ugly white lines that held many stories. He had seen scars similar to these on veterans who lived in the military housing in Neo-London and recognized that this man had experienced war, but he had never seen scars of such variation of depth and aging on one person before.
The man’s injury did not appear as bad as he had thought—the punctures did not seem as deep, just piercing the skin.
Oh, thank God. Iain sighed shakily; whoever this man was, he would not die on his account.
By the time James had brought the kit to him and Iain closed the wound with bandages, the bleeding had already slowed. But when he pressed lightly on the man’s ribs, feeling for fractures, he noted that there was swelling as the skin began to bruise.
The others drifted over, crowding around the unconscious man until Iain shooed them away. “I think he’ll be fine, but give him some space. He’s passed out—”
“From drink, no doubt.” Alvey waved her hand through the air and then pinched her nose. “I can smell gin on him. Methinks he is a drunkard!”
Iain took an experimental whiff. He knew that smell from his days of breaking up pub brawls as an Iron Warden under Philip Prance’s supervision. However, it was not that strong. To someone like Alvey, who had a supernatural, kind of creepy sense of smell, the gin would be overpowering.
“I’m thinking he’s not,” Iain said. “He’s had some drink, yeah, but he knows how to use that sword well. He’s definitely not drunk.”
“Who even has a sword these days?” James asked.
Coming to stand behind Iain, Deirdre peered over at the man with curiosity. “It’s not very nice to call him a drunk, Alvey. He did save our lives.”
“Yeah. That was…” Iain trailed off.
That was too close.
He thought of the Fachan, the dwarf, and even Boyd—how in all those encounters, they had mostly made it out with their lives by luck alone. And he thought of the fallen who hadn’t been so lucky—Commanders Prance and Walker.
How long could they stay lucky and at what cost?
“There’s more and more of them,” Iain muttered, staring at the spot on the floor where the slain Red Cap had been. “The Winter Court really is letting more monsters off their leash.”
Deirdre twisted a strand of hair around her fingers and lowered her head. “But not all Unseelies serve the Court, do they?”
James answered stiffly, “Red Caps—they don’t usually act on orders from the Winter Court. So this, uh, has got nothing to do with… with whatever’s going on.”
“No, he just wanted blood,” Iain said, frowning. “But we’ve seen more Unseelies in the past few days than is normal for a whole year maybe. Something’s changing.”
The man on the floor stirred, groaning, his face twinging in pain, but did not wake.
Alvey twisted in her chair to face Iain and said, “Someone ought to clean his sword. The blood will ruin the blade otherwise.”
The sword was on the ground where the man had dropped it. It was slick with blood from the Red Cap, wet with rain from outside. It distinctly reminded Iain of some of the blades the dwarf had hoarded in the cave, but those had been so old they were worn or covered in rust.
“I don’t know how,” Iain admitted.
“Oh, ’tis very simple. Just a quick wiping with a clean cloth should do it.”
He was about to disagree, when Deirdre added, “He wouldn’t want his sword to be ruined.”
“Yeah,” Iain said. “I probably shouldn’t just leave it.”
He picked up the longsword from the ground, marveling at the balance of it as he held it aloft. It was no prop sword or replica. It was the real thing, and Iain’s stomach did a giddy flip at the idea of holding something so well crafted, looking like it came straight out of one of the storybooks Mum used to read.
As he carefully wiped the blade down with his bandana—neglecting to use the handkerchief Deirdre had given him and being offended when James suggested it—he noticed an emblem engraved in the leather-wrapped hilt: two white keys.
After examining the symbol further, Iain let out a loud, anxious guffaw. When the others looked at him in alarm, he said, “It looks like a coat of arms, like the ones the knights used to wear.”
James peered over at him and smirked. “It’s, uh, probably not a real knight’s sword, so you can stop drooling over it and its owner.” He turned to the girls and said, “Iain likes to call me a nerd, but he’s fanatical about all that medieval stuff.”
Iain clarified gruffly, “It’s just that I used to read the stories as a kid, yeah? That’s all.”
“Uh-huh. And you insisted I pretend to be Merlin to send you on daring quests and stuff—”
“James,” Iain warned. “Let’s get some sleep, all right? I’ll finish my shift, and I’ll keep an eye out if this chap wakes up.”
Iain vigilantly guarded his friends as exhaustion from the previous night caught up to them one by one; only Alvey fell asleep immediately, snoring.
Sitting by the glowing hearth across the room, Iain kept a watchful eye on the unconscious swordsman. Even though he had saved their lives from the Red Cap, Iain had no idea why he was there or what he wanted.
Who is he?
He knew exactly how to dispatch that Red Cap. The way he used that sword… it was like he was a warrior from a legend or something. And with all those scars he had, he must have seen a lot of combat.
The amulet glinted at Iain in the faint firelight on the floor beside him like a star blinking in the night sky. He had taken it out minutes earlier to examine it again. He wondered if it was lucky, somehow, because of how he had stumbled across it and how he wanted to keep it close.
Iain picked the trinket up, running his thumb over the surface, and took a deep breath. He knew he hadn’t imagined the word written there or how it had shimmered and appeared to him in the dwarf’s hoard of treasures. It had to be magic.
The mere
mention of magic would have unnerved him over a week ago. It hadn’t mattered how many fairy tales Mum told him or how enthusiastically James had explained what it could do from the books he’d read. He had never understood it—never wanted to understand it.
Deirdre had changed that. He hadn’t realized until he met her how magic could be a part of someone and how amazing that part could be. And she had tried to help him understand it.
Ordinarily, Iain would feel silly talking to an inanimate object. But after falling flat on his back in front of everyone earlier, his pride was wounded enough to where it wouldn’t really matter. Besides, isn’t that what Deirdre could do—speak with the magic inside things?
Show me. Help me understand what you are.
He stared at the amulet, unblinking, until his eyes glazed. Then, like a trick of the light, the amulet began to shimmer and shift like cool, running water across the silver, and Iain felt himself slump back against the wall, his vision darkening.
The amulet was quiet and dim for a while, stored in a box until the boy was ready to wear it. “This belonged to your mother, and now it belongs to you,” the boy’s instructor, Merlin, announced as he presented the box to him. “It will guide you well and bring you comfort in the darkest of days.”
The sun was warm on his back, the air fresher and purer than anything and tasting of summer dew. He was running through a field toward a stone well. James was there—at least he thought the smaller boy was James for one moment. It was comforting, like reliving a fond memory, but he knew instantly it didn’t belong to him. He heard the brothers laughing and shouting—they teased each other like only brothers could.
He wanted to stay there in the heat of the sun and the careless breeze, before anything could tarnish it and before responsibilities forced them to leave that wild, green field behind. It faded much too quickly.
He was in a forested churchyard on a misty morning. That same boy—the scrawny, gawky one, a little older now—had no idea what he was doing that day when his older brother sent him on a hopeless errand to retrieve a sword. The amulet around the boy’s neck had shimmered when he saw the sword protruding from the anvil on top of the ancient, moss-covered stone.
