Beyond the Blue Moon (Forest Kingdom Novels) (19 page)

Those female bodyguards not immediately concerned with fighting off sewer rats stood watching numbly, bemused by a sight they’d never thought to see. The pounding on the closed door grew louder. Chance wedged another chair against it, and then backed away, sword in hand. Chappie came to join him.

St. Christophe breathed heavily, and glared up at Hawk and Fisher. “My people will break through soon. They’ll free me. And then you’ll die slowly and horribly for this indignity. Because I’m St. Christophe, and you’re nobody!”

“Shows what you know,” said Hawk. He reached out and retrieved his axe from among the glass and diamonds of the chandelier, and hefted it thoughtfully. And then he raised it with both hands and brought it swinging down with all his strength. The heavy steel blade sheared clean through St. Christophe’s thick neck, and buried itself in the floor beneath. The head rolled away across the floor, still wearing its last expression of outrage and surprise. Hawk watched the head roll until it finally came to a halt, and then nodded, satisfied.

“I have to say,” Chance said slowly, “that wasn’t exactly honorable, was it?”

“Bloody well is in Haven,” said Fisher.

Sometime later Hawk and Fisher and Chance sat on their horses in a high place, and looked out over the city. There was chaos in the streets, with lots of shouting and screaming, and here and there a thick plume of black smoke from an out-of-control fire. Most of the Guards were out on the streets, struggling to maintain order while not looking terribly hard for the people responsible for it all. Chappie sat beside the horses, chewing happily on the last of something with a lot of feathers.

“Time to leave,” said Hawk.

“Right,” agreed Fisher. “I think we’ve done as much damage as we can for one day.”

“Won’t you be at all sad to leave this place?” asked Chance. “I mean, it’s been your home for ten years now.”

Hawk and Fisher looked at each other. “No,” they said together, and laughed.

They had one last stop to make before they could leave; the retreat of an ex-con man Hawk and Fisher had known for some time. Zeb Tombs lived in a quiet little house in a quiet little cul de sac in a very respectable area that knew nothing of his checkered past. Hawk knocked on Tombs’ door.

“He’s not in!” said a voice from behind the door. “He’s gone away, and he was never here anyway. Tombs? Never heard of the man. Stay away! This is a plague house!” There was the sound of really repulsive coughing. “And it’s haunted!”

“Open the door, Zeb,” Hawk said calmly. “You wouldn’t want Fisher to have to kick it in, would you?”

There was the sound of opening locks and sliding bolts, and then the door swung open. A distinguished-looking gentleman in his early fifties, resplendent in a fine embroidered smoking jacket, looked quickly up and down the deserted street and then glared at Hawk and Fisher. “You leave my door alone! I just had it painted. What did I do to deserve you back in my life? I haven’t shot an albatross in ages. Oh, hell, come in, come in, before the neighbors notice. If they haven’t already. Some days you can’t walk down this street for twitching curtains. And wipe your feet!”

Hawk led the way in, followed by Fisher, who nodded cheerfully to Tombs as she barged past him. Chance and Chappie brought up the rear. Tombs gave the dog a hard look, but said nothing. He waved his guests into the parlor, a comfortable room furnished with all the ill-gotten gains of a long career of separating the more gullible well-off from as much cash as Tombs could carry away in one journey. He’d done very well for himself in Haven, until he made the mistake of trying to sell shares in a silver mine to Commander Dubois, who didn’t know much about mining, but was pretty sure you didn’t find much of it going on in land he knew to have been underwater for a hundred years. He set Hawk and Fisher on Tombs’ trail, and that was that.

“What do you want with me now?” asked Tombs. “I’ve been good. It’s been ages since I’ve done anything … creative.”

“We’re leaving Haven,” Hawk said briskly.

“Allow me to be the first to wave good-bye.”

“But we need disguises first.”

“Good idea,” said Tombs. “If I were you, I’d want to look like someone else, too. And anything I can do to help you on your way will be a real pleasure.” He glanced dubiously at Chappie, and then at Chance. “Your wolf is house-broken, isn’t he?”

“If one more person calls me a wolf, I am going to do something really distressing to them!” said Chappie, showing all his teeth.

Tombs backed quickly away and put a heavy chair between him and the dog. “Hey, if it was up to me, you could be anything you want. But trust me, the teeth and claws and fur are a bit of a giveaway.”

“Never mind Chappie,” said Fisher. “He’s just being himself. Concentrate on coming up with disguises for Hawk and me. What have you got?”

“Well,” said Tombs reluctantly, “it’s not as easy as it might have been, since
certain people
made me dispose of all my old gear, but I do just happen to have a transformation spell I was saving for a rainy day.”

“They don’t work on us,” Hawk said immediately. “We were exposed to a hell of a lot of Wild Magic in the long night, and these days any change spells just slide right off us.”

Tombs blinked a few times. “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you, Captain? But I’ve nothing else to offer you except the standard makeup and hair dyes.”

Hawk and Fisher looked at each other, and then they looked at Chance, who studied them both thoughtfully. “You really don’t look much like your official portraits, and it has been a long time. … I think the scars and the eye patch are really all you need, Your Highness.”

“Highness?” said Tombs quickly.

“Shut up, Tombs.”

“Yes, Your Highness, shutting up right now.”

“What about me?” said Fisher.

“Dye your hair black and no one will know you,” said Chance, just a little hesitantly. “Nearly everyone you knew back then is dead. The few still alive probably only ever saw you briefly, and from a distance. The dye should be enough.”

“Is she a highness too?”

“Shut up, Tombs. Or I’ll let the wolf have you.”

Dying Fisher’s long mane of hair jet black was a messy but fairly quick process, and there was no denying that afterward she looked different. She studied herself in Tombs’ bathroom mirror, scowling fiercely with her new dark eyebrows, and then looked back at Hawk lounging in the doorway.

“Tell me the truth, or you’re dead meat.”

“You look very striking,” Hawk assured her, careful to keep all traces of a smile off his face. “And most importantly, nothing at all like Julia. Settle for that. Now I really think we should be going. The Guard will probably do everything they can to avoid finding us, but you can bet all the villains we didn’t have time to get round to will be lining up for one last chance at us before we leave.”

Fisher nodded, and followed Hawk back into the parlor. Chance kept a straight face while Tombs openly boggled. Chappie hid behind Chance’s legs and had a prolonged coughing fit.

“So, what now?” asked Chance brightly.

“We ride for the city limits at full speed, and we don’t stop for anything,” said Fisher. “How far do we have to travel to reach the Rift? More than a day?”

“I have a special charm from the Magus,” said Chance. “Once we’re outside the city, I can summon the Rift opening right to us. Then all we have to do is ride through, and we’ll be back in the Forest again.”

“As simple as that,” said Hawk. “Assuming we get out of the city alive. We’ve made a lot of enemies here over the years.”

“For all the right reasons,” said Fisher.

“Are you people ever going to leave?” asked Tombs. “All this talk of enemies is making me very nervous. I can think of any number of people who’d cheerfully firebomb this whole street just to get at you. I’ve sometimes felt that way myself.”

“Relax,” said Hawk. “We’re on our way.”

“Don’t I get any payment for my hard-earned expertise?”

“What do you think?” said Fisher.

“Grrr,” added Chappie.

Hawk, Fisher, and Chance rode their horses full tilt through the crowded streets, Chappie loping along beside them, while arrows and knives and blunt objects of all kinds rained down from above, and spells and curses crackled helplessly on the air, repelled by the protective mannikin peering out of the top of Hawk’s backpack. People threw themselves out of the horses’ way, shouting threats or encouragement, or just the latest official betting odds on their getting out of the city alive. The few Guards they encountered looked the other way, determined not to get involved. Hawk and his companions ran the gauntlet, come and gone so quickly, no one could touch them. But the mannikin was burning out fast, and the horses couldn’t maintain such a pace for long. And more and more horsemen were taking up the chase behind them.

Hawk led the way, trusting to his extensive knowledge of the city streets to get him out of Haven by the fastest possible route. The streets flashed by, buildings and crowds nothing more than a blur. He could see the edge of the city from where he was, but he couldn’t get at it. There was no direct route, only a maze of narrowing streets and alleyways.

And then he rounded a corner at top speed, and saw that the end of the street ahead was blocked by a massive barricade. Armed men stood waiting before it. They’d clearly dragged all the furniture out of the surrounding tenements and piled it up into one great impassable wall. Hawk kept going. He couldn’t even slow down, with the pursuing riders so close behind. The barricade drew closer. No way around, too high to jump. The jagged ends of broken chair legs thrust out of the barricade like so many vicious spikes.

And Hawk remembered another barricade, in the long night of the Demon War, in the last great battle outside the Forest Castle. The Blue Moon burned sickly overhead, blue and diseased, and the only barricade between Prince Rupert and the legion of demons was the increasingly high pile of his own fallen dead comrades.

Fisher pulled alongside him, reining her horse in close as they raced forward. “You see that barricade?”

“Of course I see it!”

“Any ideas?”

“Not yet.”

“We’ll have to jump it,” Fisher told him.

“We can’t! It’s too high!”

“We don’t have any choice!”

And then someone stuck a blazing torch into the mostly wooden barricade, and the whole thing went up in soaring flames. Fisher scowled.

“All right, we won’t jump it. We need an idea, Hawk. And you’d better come up with it bloody soon, because that barricade is getting really close now.”

Another minute and they’d be on top of it. Hawk’s horse was already beginning to slow, despite his urging, as the flames leapt high into the sky. Quick glances around showed that the only side streets were blocked with armed men. Someone had put a lot of thought into this. There was no way out. So if you can’t go through, or around …

“Follow me!” yelled Hawk, and steered his horse sharply to the left. Right in front of them was a bulky steel fire escape, leading up to the second story and the roof. The horse took one look and tried to balk, but Hawk drove him on with spurs and oaths and a merciless grip on the reins. The horse plunged forward, its steel-clad hooves striking sparks as it clattered up the fire escape. The whole structure shook under the sudden weight, but held. Fisher and Chance urged their mounts after Hawk’s, and Chappie brought up the rear. Two armed men darted out of the shadows at the base of the fire escape.

“They’re getting away!” yelled one. “At least kill the bloody wolf!”

Chappie gave them his best snarl and a really hard look, and both men stopped sharply in their tracks. “
You
kill the bloody wolf!” said the second man. Chappie grinned as he followed the horses up the steps and onto the sloping tiled roof.

The whole stairway tried to tear itself away from the supporting wall, but somehow it held long enough for all of them to reach the roof. Hawk’s horse was growing increasingly upset, but he drove the animal on, whooping wildly with the thrill of it all. Slates and tiles shattered under the horses’ hooves as they plowed on, leaping recklessly from one roof to another. The shock and startled cries from down below seemed very far away. This high up, Hawk could see the city boundary clearly, agonizingly close. He spotted another fire escape plunging steeply down to the ground, and headed his horse toward it. He could hear Fisher and Chance following close behind. Fisher was laughing. Chance sounded as though he was praying.

They thundered down the fire escape and slammed back into the street again, the blazing barricade safely behind them. There was hardly anyone left now between the riders and the edge of the city. No one had really thought they’d get this far. One last heavy-duty curse crackled on the air around them, and all of Hawk’s hair stood on end. He could feel the magic struggling to find a hold on him, slow and vile and malevolent, but the charm in his backpack still protected him. And then the mannikin screamed shrilly, waving its raffia arms, and burst into flames. The curse had been deflected, but their protection was gone.

Hawk and Fisher and Chance left the city port of Haven at a gallop, and never once looked back. Chappie was still right there with them, tongue lolling out the side of his mouth as he panted for breath. He was built more for stamina than speed. Before them lay the ragged coastline and the sea, and a whole lot of open ground. If horsemen came out of the city after them, there was nowhere they could hide, or defend, and their horses were too exhausted to run much further away. Hawk looked across at Chance.

“We need the Rift. Now!”

“We’re too close to the city! I need a few more minutes!”

Fisher pulled in close beside Hawk on his other side. “So. We’re really going back. Back to the Castle, and the Court, and all its intrigues and formalities. At least Haven was open and honest in its evils.”

“The Forest Castle was my home,” said Hawk.

“We’re not going back to stay, are we? Tell me we’re just going back to solve Harald’s murder.”

“If my duty calls….” said Hawk.

“What about your duty to me?”