IT WAS UNFORTUNATE THAT THE MOON CHOSE that moment to wander into a cloud, so that Stalwart and Emerald, watching from behind a chicken coop some distance away, were unable to make out many details of what happened. Or perhaps that was fortunate. Whatever the new-comer looked like, it roared and growled, it made the entire stockade shake, it broke off posts and threw them away like straws. And finally it lurched in through the gap it had created and paused to sniff and snuffle. It was about the size of a bull and seemed uncertain whether it should stand on two legs or four. Its bushy tail was as large as a feather bed. Eventually it decided to go straight ahead and lumbered off between two huts.
Stalwart wiped his forehead. He managed to swallow at his third attempt. The weapon of choice against a thing like that would be a lance with warhorse and full plate mail included. “I am inclined to get out of here.”
“Wait for the next one,” Emerald whispered. They were kneeling very close together and he could feel her shaking. He had an arm around her, was why. She had one around him and they could shake in unison. “It’s coming.”
“You’re sure? The fire must have drawn them.” He could hear it. The sky was red over the center of the village.
“Possibly, but also they’ve eaten the fens bare. They either have to go after farmers’ livestock or come back here. They’re spelled to stay away, but hunger—”
“Sh!” Something was snuffling outside the stockade. The moonlight was brightening rapidly.
A couple of houses away someone screamed terribly—the newcomer had made its presence known. Then the second chimera entered. It leaped through the gap and ran after the first one so quickly that Stalwart wasn’t quite sure what he’d seen. It was bigger than the first. A rat with arms walking on its hind legs would about sum it up. Tusks? Well, he wasn’t sure about the tusks. Its tread had made the ground tremble.
“Let’s go,” he said, finding his throat drier than ever. “Outside is the lesser of two evils.”
“I wish I knew that,” Emerald said, but she was with him as he scrambled through the gap in the stockade. “You’re not going to go right out in the woods, are you?”
“I’m going back to report to Snake. I’m going to hand you over to him and tell him I’ve brought you back safe and sound, so I’ve carried out my mission and please can I go off and do something much safer for the next ten years, like guarding the King from attacks by lion-size dogs….” He followed the stockade around, through a young growth of saplings and spindly weeds, hoping he might find an unguarded boat on the river. “And he can take his Old Blades and turn them into sausages for all I care.”
“Wart! You’ll—I’m sorry! I should be calling you ‘Sir Stalwart.’”
“My friends still call me Wart.” And my enemies die! “And you’re going to be Sister Emerald again—if you still want to be.”
“Ha! I shall tell Mother Superior she can stuff her precious Sisters and use them for garden furniture.”
He chuckled and said, “Sh!” There were voices ahead. He crept forward as quietly as he could. All dry twigs near the settlement had long since been gathered up for kindling, but total silence was still impossible.
“There’s more chimeras around,” Emerald whispered.
“Which way?”
“Hmm…All around.”
He reached the corner of the stockade and knelt to peer along the waterfront. With the tide out a silvery trickle in the center of the channel was all that remained of the river. The rest was black mud. There could be no thought of boating home.
The voices he had heard came from a gang of men gathering water to fight the fire. They were too few to form a proper chain. The one on the end filled a bucket and trudged over to meet the next, who gave him an empty one in exchange, then walked the full one to the next man, and so on. They were all quite visible in the moon-light and the glow of the fire. Their cause seemed hopeless. Probably they were trying to wet down the other roofs and the village wells couldn’t keep up with demand.
“I’m going to take my shoes off,” Stalwart whispered. “That mud’ll suck ’em off if I don’t. It’ll be horrible going but still easier than trying to force a way through the brush.” They would have moonlight; the woods were dark.
“Wart, Wart! That is crazy! We’ll wander for days and days and go around in circles.”
“You do that if you want,” he said, pulling off his left shoe. “I’m going back the way we came.” Right shoe. “Didn’t you take note?”
“I got dizzy in the first few minutes.” Emerald was removing her shoes too. Perhaps girls just enjoyed arguing. There were no girls at Ironhall, but there would be lots of them at court.
“When we embarked we went to the left and the village was on the left bank. We passed six channels on the right and only two on the left. So we go right, stay on this bank, cross channels twice, and then look for our tracks. If we can’t find those, we’ll cut inland at dawn. Ready?”
She stood up, holding her shoes. “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?”
“Oh yes. Also brave, handsome, witty, charming, trustworthy, and modest. Now let’s—”
Two chimeras burst out of the trees on the far bank and flashed across the empty channel. The bucket gang fled, screaming, but one of them was run down. A chimera knocked him flat, and—as far as Stalwart could make out at that distance—bit through his spinal cord with its beak. Then it picked him up in its arms and walked back the way it had come. The second chimera seemed to have two heads. It loped on all fours into Quagmarsh and the gate remained open and unguarded behind it.
“Cloud!” Emerald said. “And Swan and her baby!”
“They’ll be all right. They can tell where the chimeras are, can’t they, just like you can? Besides, Skuldigger values them, so he’ll see they’re protected. Now let’s go.”
The mud made for horrible walking, every step sinking ankle deep into frigid muck full of rotten branches and old shells. But it was better than fighting through bushes, and there was room to see danger approaching—anything Emerald’s sensitivity missed. There was room to swing a sword.
The night was alive. Owls still hunted; the bat population was intact, with its creepy whistling cries. Chimeras were howling all over the fens, but Stalwart had no way of knowing whether they were calling to one another or just expressing rage and hunger. The fire’s glow remained visible behind them for a long time.
Emerald held her sword in her left hand and clung to him with her right, which he found quite flattering. He could even admit it was comforting under the circumstance, although poor tactics. It certainly was not a romantic moment. Their feet went squoosh—squoosh—squoosh…and monsters howled, arrrgh—arrrgh—
She began turning her head a lot, searching….
“Trouble?” he murmured.
“Close.” After a few more steps she muttered, “Very close.” Then she stopped. “Wart, we’re heading for a chimera. It’s just up ahead a little, waiting for us.”
He had that swallowing problem again. “Then it knows we’re here. Let’s keep going. We should just show it that we’re not afraid of it.”
“You show it. I’m scared to death.”
“So am I, but the chimera doesn’t know that.”
Her nails dug into his arm. “Wart! There!” She transferred her sword to her right hand.
It took him a moment to see what she had made out in the tricky silver moonlight. Something huge and dark stood within the trees, watching them. If Thrusk had been a five-year-old, that is what he would have looked like when he grew up. Except its eyes were too far apart. It had a muzzle…and horns. It was furry. He couldn’t hope to win against that thing—chimeras were just too fast, too strong, and probably much too loathe to die. Obviously the thing Dreadnought had killed had been a chimera, but he had been one of three Blades at the start of the fight. The other two hadn’t won any jeweled stars to wear on their jerkins.
This was what real fear felt like. Hard to breathe.
Seeing that it had been noticed, the monster displayed a mouthful of fangs like an ivory chess set, and growled a low, rumbling, deathly sound.
“Speak to it!” Emerald said.
“Speak to it?”
“Poor wretch! He must have some human intelligence still lurking inside there. He should be at least as smart as a dog.”
Well, it was worth a try. Stalwart strained his throat to sound deep and commanding. “Go home!” He pointed back to the village. “Food there! Go home. Go to the Doctor. Doctor Skuldigger. He has food for you. Go home!” He added under his breath, “Eat him, for all I care…Bad Boy.”
The chimera turned its head to look where he had pointed.
“Go home!” Stalwart repeated. He went through the message again.
The monster threw back its head and uttered a great, long, pitiable howl that raised the hair on his neck. Then it vanished, without sound or any sense of motion. It just was not there any more.
It could probably return the same way.
“Come along, Sister.” Stalwart resumed the trek. “You will,” he said—and for some reason he was whispering—“tell me if it changes its mind and comes after us?” She probably wouldn’t have time to get two words out.
“I’ll try to remember.”
“Let me get him at first and poke with that sword. Don’t swing it or you’re liable to get me instead.”
But nothing more happened. They walked on unmolested. He had not died of fright—Stalwart, Sir Stalwart. He was going to be a hero if his luck would just hold a little longer. But then…
They were approaching a fork in the mud highway. Hmm! If the punt had brought him along the branch presently to his left, then the branch to his right must be one of the two he had seen joining from his (then) left, so he and Emerald should now cross and go down the other. But if the punt had come along the one now to his right, then the one to his (now) left must be one of the several he had seen joining from his (then) right and should be ignored. All the channels looked the same by moonlight. His wonderful clever plan had just collapsed and all his bragging to Emerald had been vanity and wind. The safest thing to do was to stay on the right bank and keep walking. If Quagmarsh was on an island they would eventually come back to it, although they might reach the sea first. And the best that could happen would be the two channels he had seen on his left earlier turning out to be the same channel, a loop around an island, and in that case this new plan would get them where they wanted to be anyway, although they probably wouldn’t recognize the spot in the dark.
Trusting him, Emerald did not comment as they went past the fork, bearing right. Instead she said, “Was the archlute your idea?”
“No, that was Snake’s. I wondered if I’d ever be able to bring myself to smash a beautiful thing like that. You know, it wasn’t difficult at all?”
“You said you added some ideas.”
“Just one, I think. The rusty old sword. They wanted me to be unarmed, saying I would be less likely to get my throat cut if I seemed harmless. I argued that carters always carry some sort of a weapon, so I would seem unusual if I didn’t. I settled for a really absurd old relic that Vincent found in a stable.”
“And you very nearly got both of us filled full of crossbow bolts!”
He laughed, although he knew he had not been laughing at the time. “No I didn’t! They weren’t going to shoot with Skuldigger’s coach right behind us; not to mention the Doctor himself and all those splendid horses.”
“That fall you took off the wagon…?”
“Cute, wasn’t it? I told you I learned some tumbling and juggling and stuff when I was with Owain, and I kept it up at Ironhall. Even taught some of the others. It helps keep you supple.”
“You were faking?”
“Of course. Owain taught me some sleight of hand—pulling coins out of kids’ ears and so on. The secret to that sort of trick is that you set it up beforehand and you distract the viewers at the critical moment. That was what I was doing. I played the fool with the sword so I would be written off as a fool.” His jaw still throbbed. “I didn’t expect Thrusk to take it quite so seriously.”
They squelched on for a while, and then Emerald said, “You’re very brave.”
He thought about it. “I’d like to believe that, but I wouldn’t do it again. Crazy, more than brave. I’ve learned a lot these last two days…. Besides, you should talk—you’ve been marvelous!”
“I,” Emerald said grimly, “was given no choice.”
“I didn’t have much,” he admitted. Bandit and then Snake had flattered him into it. He would never fall for that trick again!
They came to another fork and again he kept to the right. The night was lasting forever. His feet hurt, every muscle in his legs ached, and he wasn’t going to suggest stopping before she did.
“At least we seem to be past all the chimeras,” he said. “I don’t hear any howling ahead of us, do you?”
“I hear something.”
Oh! So did he.
After a moment she said, “What is that?” And after another, “Oh, Wart! There must be hundreds of them! They’re coming this way, Wart!”
He stopped. Suddenly reaction set in and he felt so limp he wondered how he was managing to stay upright. Maybe it was the mud holding him up. “The garlic was Vincent’s idea.”
“Wart!?” she cried. “What do you mean?”
“You don’t have such a thing as a dog biscuit on you, do you?”
“Dogs? Those are dogs coming?”
“Garlic doesn’t smell all that strong if you keep it in cloves, or bulbs,” he said wearily. “It’s when you cut it up it stinks. Nobody wanting to transport garlic would ever dream of grinding it up and mixing it with salt first.”
“Oh!” she said. “The barrels leaked? Gaps between the planks in the wagon and the road was very bumpy? You left a trail of garlic!”
“Dogs love garlic. Absolutely crazy about it. And we didn’t plan this part, but I fell in the stuff when the wagon broke down. Then Thrusk made me run the rest of the way to the river. It wasn’t much fun while it lasted, but if he’d put me on a horse, the dogs might have lost the trail.”
The dogs were clearly audible now, Snake and his men coming at last. If old Sir Vincent was with them, as he probably was, he would have remembered the abandoned hamlet of Quagmarsh and guessed that was where the conspirators were holed up. Not having boats, the Old Blades would have had to wait for the tide to go out. It occurred to Sir Stalwart that he had left very little for them to do.