Текст книги "The Knight and the Moth"

Автор книги: Rachel Gillig

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

And then he saw me.

He went still, mouth half-open. There was blood on his bottom lip. Some near his left brow as well. The charcoal around his eyes was smeared, staining his sweat black. I’d never seen a knight so filthy—so physically degraded by his craft. He looked entirely ignoble.

I couldn’t look away.

“Diviner.”

I jumped. A knight stood to my left, his helmet under his arm. It took me a moment to tear my gaze off Rory and recognize him. “Oh. Hamelin, isn’t it?”

He gave half a smile. “And you’re—well, you’re Six. Obviously I don’t know your real name.”

“Tried to, though.”

He laughed. “Sorry about that. I felt a little guilty for asking. Especially after I’d, you know…” He ran his hand down the back of his neck. “Ruined the moment with talk.”

I shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now.”

My lack of insult, or interest, seemed to bolster him. He put on the charm, setting those perfectly straight teeth to good use with a blinding smile. “I’d do it differently, you know. If you ever had it in mind to try me again, I’d—”

“Hamelin.”

We both turned. Rory, slouched and lazy, arms crossed over his chest, was watching his fellow knight with so much blackness his eyes looked like open graves. “You and Rothspar are up next.”

“I’m talking.”

“Not anymore. Put your fucking helmet on.”

Hamelin’s smile waned. He took a step back from me. “Right. I should really—”

I didn’t watch him go. My gaze was on Rory. On his bloodied lip. He kept his eyes on me, too, then lifted his hand. Curled a single, beckoning finger.

I joined him in the heart of the yard. “Quite the spectacle.”

He was still breathing hard from combat. “You’ve spoken with Benji?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“He’s answered your questions?”

“As well as he’s fit to.”

His eyes narrowed. “And?”

“And…” My gaze fell to my bare feet. “What would you have me say? I have nowhere to go but forward.”

“Then you’ve agreed to come with us.”

“I will. To find the Diviners, I will.”

I watched his throat work, like he was swallowing what I’d said. Then he jerked his head. “Follow me.”

“Where?”

He was working the straps of his armor. Pulling it off himself as he left the yard. I muttered a swear and hurried after him. “Myndacious.”

“The knighthood leaves tomorrow,” he said. “Traum is full of danger. There are all manner of sprites.” He looked behind us to make sure no one was listening. “Not to mention the Omens. You’ll need better clothes. Fortifications. Better… everything.” It could have been blood. Or maybe, just maybe, I caught the hint of a flush in his cheeks. “I’m fitting you with armor.”

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER FOURTEEN WAX

The forge was fixed at the back of the compound, behind the barracks. Its hearth was lit but not roaring—there was no steam, no oppressive heat, no blacksmith or armorer in sight.

A tragedy. I wanted to see how they worked their hammers, shaping, reshaping. There was something enticing about hitting something again and again and not breaking it.

Rory dropped his breastplate on the floor, his gauntlets—and the rest of his upper-body armor I did not know the name of—upon the floor. He wasn’t wearing chainmail, just a pale, padded shirt.

“So.” I tapped my foot. “You’re going to kill the Omens.”

“Happily.” Rory dragged a low footstool into the middle of the wide room. “Your pedestal.”

He retreated to the wall, losing himself at a long row of shelves—digging and fidgeting and flinging. “We start the armor today, then I’ll send the order to the blacksmith at Petula Hall. We’ll find chainmail you can wear in the meantime.”

“Where’s Petula Hall?”

“The Chiming Wood. It’s Maude’s house.”

“And where is your house, Myndacious?”

“Don’t have one.” There was more flinging, fidgeting. He pulled several glass jars from the cabinetry. They were filled with rough chunks of a cloudy, yellowish material. “Still fixed on Myndacious, I see.”

“I like the way it rolls off the tongue.”

“I’ll bet.” The last thing he pulled from the cabinet was a cast iron pot the size of my head. He brought them to the hearth, an impressive juggling act, then upended the jars into the pot and set it over the grate. “What did Hamelin want?”

“To reminisce. Nothing breathtaking.”

Glass clinked. “Not a shining review.”

“I didn’t bed him, you know.”

The lines of Rory’s back went taut.

“What you said. The night we met. About me being sheltered and indistinct—bereft of fun.” I bit the inside of my cheek. “I took it to heart. So I arranged our excursion to Coulson Faire with every intention of getting naked with Hamelin in the grass and doing something adventurous. To prove you wrong.” Heat touched my cheeks. “I wanted to show you that I wasn’t too good for a knight—just too good for you.”

His hands had stilled. When he spoke, his voice was low. Tight. “What stopped you?”

“Turns out fucking someone just to spite you leaves a lot to be desired.”

Arms braced, Rory’s hands splayed on the counter. “I wanted to get under your skin,” he said quietly. “I saw you on the wall that first day at Aisling, all in white, looking down your nose at me, so patronizing and pious. I wanted—” He peered over his shoulder at me. “I don’t know. To sully you, maybe. To rip the shroud from your eyes so you’d know what I knew—that nothing is holy. That the Omens were a lie. That you were no better than me.”

He looked away. “But I regretted it. You should not have to bear, nor marshal, my derision. I was cruel. And whatever you did to spite me after—well. I deserved to hate it, watching you disappear into the trees with Hamelin.” He gave me his eyes over his shoulder once more. “I’m sorry I was such an ass.”

I didn’t know what to say to that, so I said nothing.

The forge remained quiet but for the sounds of Rory at the hearth. Slowly, a sweet smell filled the space. Not saccharine or fetid but… inviting. “What are you heating?”

“Beeswax.”

“You’re making me armor. Out of wax.”

“It’s to measure you, you twit. I’m going to put it on your clothes.”

I looked down at my billowing Diviner dress. “I hate to break it to you, but this is hardly the shape of my body.”

“I’m acutely aware of that, thank you.” He hunched over the pot, muttering aspersions into the wax as it melted. “First things first.”

He dipped his thumb into the wax, came forward—planted himself in front of me. Even with me upon the footstool, he was taller. “I need to clean your mouth.”

“Because I said fucking?”

He bit down on a smile, then nodded at my bottom lip, split by the Harried Scribe’s blow, then again from the tussle in the alley. “It’s for your wound. The cut on your lip.”

“Oh. Sure.”

He waited.

“Must I spell it out? I permit you.”

Rory rolled his eyes. Brought his wax-laden thumb to my mouth. “You don’t like it when I’m a bad knight,” he muttered, “and you don’t like it when I’m a good one.”

I reached out. Smudged blood he’d shed sparring from his own bottom lip and wiped it on my dress. “Have you considered that’s because I don’t like you at all?”

There it was again. The stain of a flush upon his olive cheeks. “Yeah. I’ve considered that.”

It stung a bit—the stroke of his thumb over my bottom lip. Rory kept his gaze to my mouth, pressing wax over my swollen, broken skin. “What were they doing?” he asked. “The men you brawled with?”

“Stalking girls.”

“And that made you angry?”

“Shouldn’t it?”

“Of course.” Each word held an edge. “I think children are particularly vulnerable in Traum.”

I considered biting his thumb. “You’re talking about Aisling again. About Diviners.”

“Merely noting that the abbess always plucks foundlings.” His finger dropped from my bottom lip. “And always girls, to do her bidding.”

“Maybe foundlings are less likely to question that which is taught to them in kindness,” I murmured. “And the abbess was kind to me. She took care of me. Told me that I was special. That dreaming was divine. As to why she chooses girls—I learned it’s about pain. How girls bear it best. Which rather contradicts what I just said about her being kind, doesn’t it?”

A horrible fissure began in me, disrupting everything I’d believed in. “She starved me for affection, for praise, then gave me just enough to whet my palate. I’d have done anything she asked of me. But if she’s the sixth Omen, the moth, she never cared for me, did she? I was but a piece of parchment to scrawl her false story upon. A cog in her machine.” I bit the inside of my cheek. Turned to the wall. “I feel so stupid for my part in it.”

Rory’s voice rooted in me like a fisherman’s hook. “You’re not stupid.”

Brow knit, he examined my shroud. Not with irritation like he often did, but like he had finally been afforded a glimpse through it. “Her care came with conditions. You bent yourself to fit them, and now… now you see yourself as this terrible burden. Like you’re nothing if you’re not the best, the most useful version of yourself.”

I did not like that. Being so thoroughly charted. “Thereabouts.”

He must have known that I wanted to peel my skin off and scrub it under water, because he withdrew his scrutiny. Retreated to the cabinets. “It’s not true, you know,” he said. “You don’t have to be good, or useful, for someone to care about you.”

I watched his back, running my tongue over the wax-covered split in my bottom lip, the texture grainy, sweet from the beeswax—and salty where his thumb had been.

When Rory faced me once more, he held a needle and a spool of gray thread.

“I’m going to tailor that dress to your body,” he said. “Trim the excess fabric. Spread wax on it. When it hardens, it should form a delicate exoskeleton with measurements accurate enough for Maude’s blacksmith to make you a custom suit of armor.” His smile did not touch his eyes. “Your Diviner dress will be ruined. Is that acceptable?”

“Try not to enjoy it too much.”

He rounded my body and gripped gossamer like it was the scruff of an animal, wadding excess fabric in his fist until it pulled closely against my throat, breasts, diaphragm.

I drew in a stiff breath.

“You all right?”

“Fine.”

Rory sewed me into my old, ratty dress. When he was done along my back, he moved to my left side. “Hold out your arm.”

I did, and he gripped my forearm. Large as his hand was, it didn’t fit around my bicep. He made the smallest hum of appreciation, then set to sewing my sleeve until it wore me like a second skin, then did the same for my right sleeve.

“You sew well.”

“Do I?” In and out went the needle, the thread whispering after it. Rory’s brow knit in concentration, and I took the moment to study him. His dark lashes. His cheekbones. The ruined charcoal around his eyes.

“I’ve seen knights from the Chiming Wood wear charcoal like that. Maude does it, too.” I nodded at the three gold bands in his right ear. “Those make you look like you’re from Coulson Faire.”

He kept sewing, running the tip of his tongue over his bottom lip in concentration. “I’m not from any one place.”

“Where did you live the longest? Castle Luricht?”

His eyes shot to my face. “Benji’s loose-lipped.”

“His grandfather’s story required credence. You were it.”

“What joy is mine.” He sighed. “It’s true. I lived for a time at Castle Luricht under the Artful Brigand. I also lived in Petula Hall with Maude. But the longest I was ever at one place was likely here in the Seacht. Pupil House II, to be exact.”

“Because you’re a foundling.” I peered down at him. “You might have said earlier.”

“Not my fault you were delusional enough to mistake me for nobility.”

“How then were you knighted? I thought—”

“That one needs to be born within one of the hamlet’s noble families to be knighted? You’d be correct.” Rory stepped back to the cabinets and retrieved a large pair of shears. “There are, however, exceptions.”

My sleeves—which had been tented—were now pulled tightly against my arms. Rory ran his hand down my left arm—down the new seam he’d sewn—and brought the shears to the excess fabric. “Keep still.”

I dreaded it would feel like a mutilation, him destroying my Diviner’s dress. But the sound—shears, cutting though gossamer—was strangely satisfying. I shut my eyes and listened to it, imagining myself an insect, the first piece of its cocoon coming away.

The room smelled aromatic now, the beeswax fully melted upon the hearth. When he was done trimming my dress, Rory snagged a loose cloth, and maneuvered the pot of melted wax from the hearth onto the countertop. “I’ll need to work fast before it hardens,” he said, pouring the wax into a pitcher. He dipped his finger in to test it. “It’ll be warm at first.”

“That’s fine.”

“If it’s too much—”

“It’s fine.”

Rory’s eyes, dark and derisive and guarded, had never been easy to read. They still weren’t. But when he looked up, pinning me with a glare, I was suddenly certain those eyes were deeply unhappy with me. “Have it your way.”

He came forward. Lifted the pitcher. Poured a line of wax from my shoulder to my wrist. It didn’t burn, but it was warm enough to hurt.

I didn’t say a thing.

Rory knuckles went white on the cusp of the pitcher. “This isn’t Aisling.” He took a full step back. “Don’t be such a fucking martyr.”

I bit down. Martyr. “Pith, Myndacious. I said it’s fine.”

He didn’t move.

“The wax will harden,” I snapped.

It didn’t. After a few minutes of staring daggers, he approached once more. The next pass of wax down my arm wasn’t so unbearably hot. Rory molded the wax over my sleeves until it was indeed a kind of exoskeleton, immobilizing my joints in place.

He said the names of the pieces of armor as he worked, as if tethering himself to the task. “Pauldron,” he murmured, his hands manipulating the wax over my shoulder. “Rerebrace.” He pressed over my bicep, then my forearm. “Vambrace.”

He was entirely efficient. By the time the wax had hardened there was not a piece of my arms he had not run his hands over. He did the same to the line of my shoulders, then my back, stopping at the distinct line of my waist. When he was finished he rounded my body, gave me a pointed look—

And dropped to his knees.

I tightened everywhere.

“May I?” Rory poked my thigh. “The fronts of your legs?”

I nodded.

He painted my legs through my dress with broad strokes. When I dared look down, he was pushing fabric aside to get to my shins, and the fabric looked so sheer, and he in contrast so corporeal, like he was tangling with a ghost.

“Hold still.”

“I am.”

“You’re tapping your foot.” Rory gripped my calf muscle. “Now you’re still.” He finished my left leg and turned to the right. “Greaves,” he said, running the wax up my shin. He cupped my knee. “Poleyn.” I heard a tremor in his inhale. Fresh wax poured over my thigh, followed directly by the stroke of Rory’s open palm. “Cuisses.”

“Will I be afforded a helmet?”

“If you like. Though it may be difficult to see through both visor and shroud, and only one will protect you from injury.”

His meaning was plain. Take off the shroud. But he didn’t say it—he seemed determined not to. Rory simply raised himself to his feet and eyed his work. The last bit of my body not encased in wax was my abdomen. My sternum. Breasts. Ribs. Stomach. Every vital thing that resided behind a breastplate.

The red returned to his cheeks.

“You’re nervous,” I said, grinning. “Why is that?”

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

“But you’re blushing. Dying to fidget with that stolen coin in your pocket, maybe. Touching a Diviner must make your heretical heart truly uneasy—”

Rory came toward me until our noses were flush, speaking within an inch of my mouth. “You know what I think?” he murmured. “I think you like that I’m a bad knight. It’s why you feel so righteous, flaying me with your tongue—why you enjoy throwing me down and grinding your heel into my pride. It does something to you.” He wet his bottom lip. “I’d bet my oath your whole body is awake right now, aching and eager at the thought of putting me in my place.”

I couldn’t think. He was breathing against my mouth and I against his and the sound wasn’t like any hunger I’d known. Torrid and depraved and desperate—

“You want to throw me down,” Rory said, eyelids dropping as he whispered into my parted lips. “And I, prideful, disdainful, godless, want to drag you into the dirt with me.”

He pulled back, his eyes as black as the Harried Scribe’s inkwell.

“I’ll ask Maude to do the rest.”

He rounded the stool. Walked away. The door to the forge closed. I stood alone in a shell of wax, staring at the wall, willing my breathing to slow.

OceanofPDF.com

The Fervent Peaks

Oar.

Torrid and unforgiving, the river carves a path, always. Only the oar, only vigor, can Divine.

OceanofPDF.com

CHAPTER FIFTEEN MOUNTAIN SPRITES

I rested my head against the wood lip of a cart, dappled sunlight dancing over my face. We were out of the Seacht, past its cobbled streets and reaching bridges, back on the holloway road. I’d refused to look back. Refused a horse as well. The gargoyle, heartened by the spirit of refusal, had declined to fly, and so accommodations were provided, the two of us riding like cargo, jostled about in a horse-drawn cart.

I was wearing all the clothes Maude had left me, tunic and cloak and leggings. But the boots—the boots sat in a corner of the cart, untouched.

Maude sat next to them, catechizing me on what lay ahead. “The Fervent Peaks are rough—wet and windblown and cold. There’s one road, and it’s steep. The village is scattered upon it, but most of the dwellings sit on a wide plateau where the Tenor River pools. Folk fish there, but rarely go higher into the mountains, which are almost impossible to climb.”

“What a horrible picture you paint,” the gargoyle said, smiling and nodding, like he’d paid her a compliment.

“When I dream of the Ardent Oarsman,” I murmured to the sky, “I fall onto rocks. There’s a basin of water nearby, surrounded by seven jagged mountains. That’s where I see the stone oar.”

Maude ran the edge of her axe over a whetstone. No matter the jostling of the cart, her movements remained controlled. “This basin of water. Are there dwellings around it?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What is around it?

“Rocks.”

Her eyes lifted. “Helpful.”

I threw my gaze out over the landscape—rolling moors covered in bromegrass and craggy rocks—and tried not to sulk. “I’m afraid I’m of little use. I have no idea where the Ardent Oarsman is. No idea where anyone is.”

“None of that.” Maude’s tone was firm. “You being here is enough.”

“I’m surprised King Castor’s grandfather didn’t document the precise locations of the Omens in his precious notebook.”

“Trust me, he tried. But the Omens have been doing this for hundreds of years. They obscure themselves beneath hoods or use their stone objects to vanish at whim. They know how to hide in plain sight.”

“I say, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle was leaning over the lip of the cart. “Is a road still a road if no one rode upon it?”

“Road and rode are two different words, gargoyle.”

“Really?” A wayward branch swatted him over the face. “Perplexing.”

Maude stared.

“You’ll get used to him,” I mumbled.

She cleared her throat. “Right.”

“Why not find the Ardent Oarsman the same way you found the Harried Scribe? Leave a bit of pilfered spring water lying about. See who comes for it.”

Maude nodded at her axe. “That’s exactly what we’ll do. But first—the ceremony.”

“What ceremony?”

“The noble families host a ceremony when a new king comes. And since this is Benji’s first time in the hamlets as king, they’ll be wanting to put on a bit of a show. Faith requires a display. The greater the spectacle, the greater the illusion.”

“So I’ve heard.” I paused. “Maybe we can use that to our advantage.”

A brown horse came up next to the cart. Fig.

Rory wasn’t wearing his helmet—his black hair a mess. He pushed it out of his eyes. “Anything of note?”

I plastered a smile over my mouth. “Benji and Maude will be at the ceremony, which leaves you and I to sneak off with the spring water and watch for the Ardent Oarsman like good little soldiers.”

Maude’s gaze lifted. “It’s not a bad plan.”

Rory’s eyes flickered to my face. We hadn’t spoken since he’d measured me for armor.

You want to throw me down. And I, prideful, disdainful, godless, want to drag you into the dirt with me.

“If you wanted to get me alone, Diviner, all you had to do is ask.”

Maude gave him an exasperated look. But Rory just smiled, his stupid words winning two battles. Maude, irritated—me, flustered. And then he was spurring Fig, riding hastily up the line of the caravan to join Benji at the lead.

I shot air out of my nose. “Idiot.”

“He riles you.” Maude grinned at her axe. “And you him.”

“We’ve made an art of it.” I sat up straighter. Appraised her. “How old are you, Maude?”

“Forty-one.”

“How did you grow so close with the brute and the boy-king?” She wasn’t just older than Rory and Benji. She was more rooted. No derision, no drinking—less at war with herself. “Maybe I’ve only been around women, but you seem better natured than the two of them combined.”

“Don’t be mean.” Maude rubbed the flat of her thumb opposite the axe’s grain. “Benji’s plenty good-natured.”

I chuckled.

“Benji’s grandfather and my mother were knights together, our families close.” Her gaze went soft. “I was already in armor when the little shit was born. His parents passed, and his grandfather was too occupied hunting down information about the Omens to mind him, so we Bauers—that’s my name, by the way. Maude Bauer. We took Benji in.” Maude looked up the line of knights. “It was hard for him, being a Castor. Especially after his grandfather was killed. And Benji can be shy. It took him a while to get good with his sword. The other knights kicked him about. I put a stop to that.”

“So you’re like a mother to him?”

She snorted. “Don’t know a thing about being maternal. But I suppose there’s a pinch of tenderness under all this armor. I do love a stray.”

“Which brings us to Rory.”

“Rory.”

I thought Maude entirely beautiful in that moment, her green, charcoal-rimmed eyes catching sunlight, the lines around her mouth—the crow’s feet around her eyes—deepening as she spoke. “King Castor brought Rory, a scrawny boy of eleven, to Petula Hall when I was the exact age he is now. Twenty-six.” She looked into my shroud, into my eyes, swearing me to secrecy with a simple gaze. “He’d lost all faith in gods and men. Needed a purpose. So I made him my squire.”

I couldn’t imagine Rory as a boy, thin or small or vulnerable. He was none of those things, almost as if he’d taken pains to carve them from himself. “Why?” I asked. “Why help him, I mean?”

“Same reason you want to help your Diviners,” Maude said. “Because you care, and because you’re able to do something about it.”

I pondered that. “Was he a good squire?”

“The worst I’d ever seen.”

I smiled.

“He was raw and impatient and untrusting, and the other knights worked him hard because he wasn’t highborn and had no right being where he was.”

“Let me guess. You put a stop to that.”

“And enjoyed doing it. But Rory settled in time. Got stronger. Smarter. Meaner, too. Or maybe he just stopped thinking mistreatment was something he deserved.”

“Sounds like neither of them would be where they are without you.”

“They’d have found their way. They’re a good balance, those two. Benji wants to be resilient like Rory, and Rory wants to feel like the kingdom is worth changing the way Benji does.”

“Or maybe they both want to be just like you.”

Maude suddenly seemed battle worn. “The Bauer women have a stalwart reputation—a legacy of hunters. The Chiming Wood was once full of fearsome sprites, you know. My family slaughtered them. When I was knighted, I had massive boots to fill. Then Benedict Castor the First became my mentor. He directed my gaze to the kingdom’s greater issues—the corruption of the Omens and Aisling’s oppressive hand.” She tapped her axe. “I never understood what kind of knight I wanted to be until I struck down the Faithful Forester and discovered what a righteous kill was. Suddenly, I had a purpose, and it felt so good. But then Benedict took up the mantle, and the abbess called him a heretic, and the nobles in the hamlets echoed her.”

Maude shook her head. “We take vows as knights. To the kingdom, but also to our sovereign. I would have done anything for Benedict Castor, and he knew that. Which is why—”

She hauled in a breath. “Which is why he told me to deny him. That I could not go on, rooting out the Omens and their stone objects if anyone suspected I was complicit in his heresy. So when we knights brought him to stand before the abbess, and a Diviner proffered him five bad signs from the Omens, it was I who took him by the arm and dragged him into the courtyard. I, the first of his knights, to proclaim my withdrawal from his knighthood.”

Her green eyes found my face. “I, who threw the first stone.”

The gargoyle and I were entirely still. “That must have been horrible,” I murmured.

Maude nodded stiffly. “I made my own vow that day. That all Benedict Castor had learned, all he had taught me, would not go to waste. That I would bide my time, use my family name, my strength, to make another Castor the king. A king who would take up the mantle, and this time, succeed. That I would taste more righteous kills, and paint my blade with Omen blood. After all”—daylight danced over the edge of her axe—“that legacy of hunters shouldn’t go to waste, should it?”

I slept in the cart and dreamed of Aisling. Of my hammer, my chisel, working limestone. Of bells that kept ringing until I could not tell who was crying out—the cathedral, or the stones I’d split.

The cart jostled and I woke. I looked around for One—for Two and Three and Four and Five—but they were not there. The light was dimmer than before, the holloway road less deep, the trees more sparse—the landscape rocky and sprawling. I sat up. Took in the view. The king’s caravan was following the Tenor River, going upstream. Headed toward… “Oh.”

Looming far in the distance beneath heather-gray clouds that grew darker by the moment was a jagged mountain range. Stern and steep, its mountaintops clustered together, like claws on a gargantuan seven-fingered hand.

The Fervent Peaks.

I reached out, and the gargoyle’s stone palm was there.

“Could your friends be in that high, jagged place, Bartholomew?” he asked.

A terrible noise made me jump. A call, long and loud, starting as a resonant rumble and ending on the pitched notes of a shriek. It came from the north, and I looked out over the sprawling landscape. A nearby hill, grass and heather and rock—

Was moving.

The noise sounded again, so loud I slapped my hands over my ears. The horses cried out, and the hill raised itself onto four hooved feet.

No. No, it wasn’t a hill. It was a creature with the appearance of a hill, its back decorated by stone and bromegrass. It was only when it stood upon its legs that I realized it was like an enormous boar. It had granite tusks and wide orange eyes. Its mouth was full of dark mud, and that mouth was larger than the cart I rode in.

Not a hill at all. It was—

“Mountain sprite!”

The knights began to shout. Maude was already out of the cart, volleying over its lip, barking “Stay here” to the gargoyle and me as she ran up the line. “Spread out,” she shouted. “Ready your whips.”

The line of knights scattered, and the ground began to shake.

“I say, Bartholomew.” The gargoyle blinked his stone eyes. “What on earth are they doing?”

What indeed. Whips seemed an absurd weapon against such a behemoth foe. But then the knighthood regathered, a resolute line, riding at full canter toward the mountain sprite, cracking their whips.

The sound was like a storm. Sharp, volatile.

“They’re herding it away,” I murmured.

The sprite did not like the sound of the whips. It grew louder in its shrieks, holding its ground. I saw its wide, desperate eyes flash, and then the creature was lowering itself onto its great haunches.

And lunging.

Four knights fell from their horses, knocked asunder as the sprite broke their line. Whips cracked, but the creature kept lunging, kept roaring, snapping its wide, muddy mouth.

“It’s trying to eat them,” I said, hand to my throat.

“And look,” the gargoyle said pleasantly. “It’s coming our way.”

It was. The sprite was not as quick as the knights, who rode in expert circles, avoiding its attempts to snap at them. But the gargoyle and I were still, and the sprite had caught us in its orange gaze. It came closer, making the entire world tremble.

I reached for my hammer. Felt a hollowness in my palms and the soles of my bare feet. “Perhaps we should—”

The sprite’s monstrous cry stole my words, so loud my ears screamed. The cart horse spooked, jolting forward, and the gargoyle and I were upended, tumbling from the cart onto the road.

We fell in a tangle, my foot in his ear, his left wing lodging under my ribs.

“How undignified.” The gargoyle let out a whimper. “Did anyone see me fall?”

“Bigger problems,” I managed. The mountain sprite was closer now, its great eyes trained on our cart, creaking behind our cantering horse. It began to run after it, dropping its great snout onto the road, as if rooting. With five great strides, it caught up to the horse and cart. Opened its gaping mouth.

And ate the horse, and the cart, in one snapping bite.

I heard the groan of wood, the crunch of bones—the horse’s final scream.

The gargoyle and I shared a horrified glance.

The earth shook again—this time from the knights. They’d re-formed the line, and were riding once more toward the sprite, whips cracking. I took the gargoyle by the arm, yanking him onto his feet. We darted off the road, diving behind the cover of a craggy granite boulder.

The knights cantered past us. I saw Maude in the center, leading the charge.

The sprite turned, its great eyes widening as it faced the charge. When it opened its mouth, shrieking loud enough to split the sky, I could feel its fury, its fear.

The horses whickered, reared, but the knights kept their seats. Save one, who slipped from his saddle, unnoticed by the rest, who cantered ahead. He landed among rocks, his gold armor, gold hair, shining among gray granite.

Benji.

The gargoyle and I ran forward. When we reached the king where he’d fallen, the knights were a ways away. They’d come upon the mountain sprite, whips and swords drawn, and more horrible shrieks sounded.