“Tell us your names,” she demanded.
Angelika still couldn’t focus. Franziskus answered for her: “I am Franziskus
of Stirland. This is Angelika Fleischer. As I was saying—
Baldy clamped stubby fingers around the front of Franziskus’ windpipe.
“Speak only when spoken to, Ladder-Legs.”
Curly-Locks nodded and Baldy let go of him. When he’d finished gasping,
Franziskus turned to face the dark-haired woman, who was clearly the one in
charge.
“I am Lela Mossrock, unfairly exiled from the Moot—as were each and every
one of us.” She swept her hand to indicate her fellows. “You say you came here
for Toby Goatfield?” She spat the name as if it were the filthiest of
obscenities.
“We were told we could find him here. Have you seen him?”
Now it was her turn to grab his throat. She barely had to stoop. “If I had,
he’d be lying beside you, my hatchet sunk deep in his brain!”
Franziskus jerked his mouth, to show her he couldn’t speak with the fingers
jammed into his windpipe. She let go. He coughed. “Evidently we’ve been
deceived, no doubt by common foes. Have you done anything to offend the
so-called Prince Davio, of the Castello del Dimenticato?”
She stepped back from him, cocking her head. “I have heard of him; that is
all.” She looked at the others. “Do any of this fool’s babblings make sense to
you?”
They served up a variety of blank looks. Scimitar shrugged. “Arthie and me
went down there for rotgut, last autumn, but we didn’t do nothing to cause no
one to send no murderers our way.”
“But Goatfield knows of this place,” Franziskus said.
“Knows of it?” Curly-Locks’ eyes were liquid hate. “He tricked us into
building it for him, doing nary a lick of work himself! It was here he stole my
virtue, which I had carefully hoarded as the most precious of things—meant
only for he who would wed me, fair and true!” One of her hatchets had reappeared
in her hand; it quivered beside her head.
“And Henty Redpot? You know of him, too?”
“Henty?” Scimitar exclaimed. “When I sees him, I’ll thumb his eyes from their
sockets—grind them to paste!”
“Only if you’re the first to get to ’im,” growled Baldy.
Franziskus could not imagine them successfully overcoming the crazed and
muscle-bound Henty, even if they worked in tandem. He decided, however, that
this was an insight best left unshared. Instead he said: “So from what you know
of this Toby, he sounds like quite the master of treachery?”
“He’s not half as smart as he thinks,” Curly-Locks said.
“But let’s say he wanted to throw someone off his trail. He knows exactly
where this place is, well enough to give directions to another party, yes?”
“Of course. Didn’t you hear me?”
“This is what happened. We fell victim to his trickery. He had someone come to
us, someone who made herself seem friendly to our cause; she sent us here,
thinking it was him and Henty down in that fort, holding captive a young fellow
we’re honour-bound to rescue.”
“Honour? It’s honour made you destroy our home?”
“No, it was treachery—Toby’s treachery. He did this to you. We were but his
pawns.”
“His dupes, more like.”
Franziskus paused for another little cough. “I wish I could argue with you,
but you are right. It was my fault. I am the one who believed this person, who
turned out to be in league with your enemy.”
Angelika now seemed ready to speak.
Franziskus kept going, to cut her off: “It was I who convinced my friend to
come here, and I who dealt the worst wound to any of you.” Poxy responded to
this observation with a nod of grievance. “If you wish to avenge the wrongs done
to you,” Franziskus continued, “take me, but let my friend go. The fault is
mine, and I must bear the punishment alone.”
“Or better yet,” Angelika broke in, “come with us, and help us hunt the rat
down once and for all! He’s the one you really want.”
Curly-Locks took another look at the greying plume of smoke rising from their
fortress. “You speak glibly and smooth-tongued.”
“You don’t have much reason to trust us, I’ll grant you that,” Angelika said.
“But picture it: the look on his face when all of us show up together, to exact
our reckoning on him. All of his worst enemies, gathered together by his own
too-clever plan. Wouldn’t that look be worth almost anything to you?”
Curly-Locks pursed her lips thoughtfully. “It’s a tempting picture you
paint.”
“They lie!” Poxy cried. “He paid them to come here. He swore he’d get us,
didn’t he, when we threw him and Henty out? He swore he’d bring our hard work
crashing down around our ears, and look there, he’s done it—just as he said!”
Curly-Locks folded her arms. “What Reecie says makes sense.”
“I agree, it’s the sort of thing Goatfield might try,” Angelika said. “But in
this case, it happens he didn’t. If you believe one thing I say, believe this: I
wouldn’t let him pour water on me if I were on fire.”
“It’s a trick Toby taught them.” The poxy one winced and clutched at her
chest wound. “First they’re supposed to burn us out, then lead us into an
ambush. That’s why Toby and Henty ain’t here themselves. They’re waiting for us
in the trees along the road, maybe even with that pervert elf of theirs.”
“So you know Elennath, too?” said Franziskus.
By way of reply, the scarred halfling made an obscene gesture.
“Look at the sword I had with me,” said Franziskus. “Do you recognise it?”
The halflings searched the grass for the dropped elven blade. Scimitar picked
it up and handed it to Poxy. She studied the runes on its blade.
“You’ve seen that before,” Franziskus said.
“So what if I have?”
“If you knew that haughty fey-man at all, you’d know he wouldn’t give that
sword to anyone, under any circumstances. Am I right? Especially if he needed it
to ambush you down the road.”
“He was overweening proud of it, Reecie,” said Curly-Locks. “Always saying it
was forged by Elfy Such-and-Such by the Elfy smiths of So-and-So.”
“I took it from him the last time we fought them,” Franziskus said. “My
possession of it proves we’re no friend of his, nor of Toby’s.”
“You beat them in combat?” Curly-Locks asked. “Why did you let them live,
then?”
“At the time, we didn’t know them that well.”
Curly-Locks stowed her hatchet in one of the belts on her back. She interwove
the fingers of her tiny hands. “I must ponder this,” she said.
“I say, never mind what they say about Toby,” said Poxy, or Reecie, as her
name seemed to be. “They burned our place, and that’s a good enough reason to
skin them alive.”
“We’ll confer on it,” said Curly-Locks, waving the others to follow her out
of earshot.
Attempting to hear what they said was once again fruitless. Angelika tested
her bonds. “They tied these tight,” she said.
“Are you hurt?” Franziskus worked his own wrists, but they were too tightly
knotted together. He tried his ankles; the rope seemed to have a little more
give in it there.
“I’m sore. My head has started ringing again.” She tried to read the
direction of the halflings’ deliberations from the postures they’d adopted. Poxy
alternately waved her fist and pointed her fingers: that was bad. None of the
others provided any signs, one way or the other.
Tired, she sank to rest with the back of her head in the grass. The smoke
from the fire had thinned; it blew gently across her field of vision as she
gazed up into the sky. It was a summery blue now, strewn with fleecy clouds. One
cloud looked like a haunch of mutton. Angelika wondered what kind of omen that
would be.
Franziskus cleared his throat. Angelika pulled herself up until she was
sitting. The halflings approached them deliberately, in formation, Curly-Locks
at the head. Their faces said nothing of their decision.
Curly-Locks stepped in front of Franziskus. “Here it is,” she said. “You
saved Arthie’s life, so we won’t beat you beyond recovery. But all the same,
we’ll have to beat you.” She withdrew the hatchet from her back, flipping it so
that its head pointed to the ground. She swung its haft up past her shoulder and
then brought it down on the back of Franziskus’ head. He dropped down sideways,
onto the ground. Hands seized him from behind—they belonged to the one with
the scimitar, the one whose life he’d saved. They forced him back up, to receive
another blow from Curly-Locks’ hatchet handle. Franziskus tried to twist
himself free of the restraining hands, but they had him in too strong a grip.
Curly-Locks skipped back and swung the haft across the right side of his jaw.
She brought it raining down on the bone above his right eye, then on his left.
She cracked him in the upper lip, making his teeth cut into it. He tasted his
blood; it filled his mouth. Scimitar hauled him up to his feet. Curly-Locks used
the haft like a battering ram and jammed it into his sternum. She cracked it
along his ribs, first down the right side, and then up the left. She smacked him
on the knees. He heard a squeaky, burbling sound; through watery eyes, he saw that it was Poxy,
laughing. It was the same laugh he’d heard his playmates make, when he was a
child; they taught themselves about flies and beetles by pulling their legs off.
He felt his right eye close up on him. The other fluttered shut.
“His hand. The right,” he heard Curly-Locks say. He tried to open his eyes
but they refused him. He heard himself scream, and then connected that sound
with the sudden pain that now curled through the fingers of his right hand,
which Scimitar was holding by the wrist. He was screaming, and feeling more
blows land on his hand. Then it stopped, momentarily, only to switch to the
left. He spat, so as not to choke on the blood welling in his throat.
“Oh, so you want to spit on us?” he heard. He felt more hits land on his
legs, and in his gut. He knew he was falling, and that the halfling behind him
kept yanking him back up for more.
Time ended. He was still being hit.
“Open your eyes,” he heard.
“Open your eyes,” he heard again.
“Open your eyes, I say!” The blows had stopped.
He strained his left eye open. Swirling in front of him was Curly-Locks’
face, so large, so close to him, that it blotted out the sky and everything
else. “There you are,” her monstrous teeth somehow moving at a slower speed than
the words coming out of them. “I have a message for you to take to Toby, when
you see him.”
He tried to say that she should take her own messages to Toby, but his tongue
wouldn’t work and he had no air.
“When you see him, tell him he’s a father—and that Lela Mossrock has sworn
his doom!”
He was then finally allowed to fall. His eyes closed themselves. He could
still hear, though there was a buzzing sound, distant yet at the same time loud,
overlaying everything else. Even through this, he could tell: they had moved on
to Angelika, and were giving her the same treatment.
The bloody welts on Angelika’s face glistened in the bright moonlight, as she
loomed over Franziskus. Starry pinpoints surrounded her in the dark sky. He was
flat on his back. His image of her blinked in and out as his eyelids trembled
shut, then open, then shut. Everything hurt.
He could barely recognise her. Gummy, drying blood matted her hair. Her left
eye was puffy, protruded, sealed shut, and purple. The skin of her cheekbones
had parted to reveal tributaries of exposed red flesh. Her lips were split. She
brought a hand to his forehead, to move aside his long, blond locks; its fingers
had curled into a crooked ball.
“Franziskus,” she choked.
“Unh,” he said.
“Franziskus,” she gasped.
“Unh,” he said again.
“Franziskus.”
“Unh,” was all he could manage.
“It’s
nuh
-night. We—we—” She stopped to breathe. “Have to find
shelter. Wolves.”
He listened for wolves. He didn’t hear any.
“I can’t move,” he said. “Wolves,” she said. “Unh.”
Sun shone in his eyes. He dragged himself into the shade. It hurt to move. He
put his head against something and hoped sleep would take him. The angle
strained his neck. He leaned up. Only one of his eyes could open: the left one.
He was down in the pit, propped against a charred beam. Angelika lay across from
him, her eyes open. As he wakened, pain crept up on him. At first, he felt the
agony in undifferentiated form: each part of him was just as wracked as any
other. Gradually, his awareness gained exactitude: his hands throbbed worst,
then his shoulders, then his legs, then his gut. The head floated above this,
buzzing, drunk and detached. Franziskus was no medic, but he knew enough to
reckon that this was probably the worst sign of all.
“Oh, gods—please, in Shallya’s name…” he said, invoking the mercy
goddess. It even hurt to talk. In order to speak, he had to move the muscles of
his chest and neck, and this sent ripples of ache through his back and torso,
and he shuddered and groaned.
He surveyed Angelika’s injuries. Her face was swollen, unrecognisable. She
showed barely an inch of skin that wasn’t either purple with bruises, or etched
red with cuts. She lay awkwardly against the same blackened beam that propped
him up. Her right thigh was folded under her leg; her torso jutted up from her
waist at an angle of forty-five degrees. “Your back,” he said. “Did they break
it?”
“No. I don’t think so.” She spoke so quietly, Franziskus could barely hear
her, above the rushing in his ears. “Just moved. Like this.” A jolt ran through
her. Franziskus felt a jarring twinge, in sympathy. “Because it hurts less. This
way.”
Franziskus thought about nodding.
For a long time, neither spoke. Franziskus closed his one good eye, hoping to
persuade his body to go back into unconsciousness. It would not go. Now that he
was awake, the pain was too strong to release him.