There, by the side of the road, waiting, as he had for longer than expected; three days longer. Head high in the long grasses. He could smell the bluebells and a wild violet and a feral lettuce in bloom. Also, alas, fox scat, but never mind that. As his nanny used to say, so long ago.
“Never mind that.”
Napoleon said it aloud, awkwardly. He had managed to gnaw off a leaning sedge weed to chew. Made it last. Make it all last. The feeling of the sun on his face, the sound of woodpeckers in the nearby woods, the wheeling hawks far above that sometimes dipped into his field of vision—all of it.
He breathed in a long draft of fresh air through his nose, as his mouth was otherwise occupied with the sedge weed.
Freedom. For now.
His benefactors were late, but at least it hadn’t rained. At least Crowley hadn’t found him; indeed, if he was any judge of Wretch’s character, Crowley had his own problems to deal with right now.
At least Ruth Less had eaten the demi-mages around the corner, out of sight … and largely out of smell. Something large like a wolf had worried at the bodies one night, but even that was a mercy. That wolves had not yet worried about him.
Napoleon hadn’t minded Ruth Less. How could one mind the person … well, the monster, that had set one free? He rather liked her, if he were honest. She had a quality he admired in a monster: honesty (of which Crowley had none, although it did not come easy to emperors, that much Napoleon would admit).
Earnestness, too. She was only ever and always herself. No one could change that.
Ruth Less also had the most amazing pouch, as Napoleon could vouch, having spent some time in that sacred space, lined with stars. It was only then, knowing that Ruth Less was larger on the inside than the outside, that he realized she was a Celestial Beast, but on an order of magnitude greater than he had ever seen. He doubted Wretch realized this, and one reason he’d chuckled in the pouch, during all his adventures there, was thinking of how surprised Wretch might be when he found out, and Crowley, too. And not surprised in a good way.
Fond reminiscence, that pouch trip, for time traveled different inside Ruth Less and Napoleon could write a memoir just chronicling the year … rather, the day he had spent there, before being deposited for roadside pickup. The places he had visited … he would never be the same.
But Napoleon was still just a head, all the same. A head peeking out among the weeds, propped up atop a half-decomposing tree stump. He could feel the wood lice rampant with their own tiny dramas along the edges of his own stump. Still cataloging the good rather than the bad: At least it hadn’t been cold; at least no wild beast had gnawed upon his face.
A bumblebee landed on his chin, took off again clumsily. A toad hopped by. A fat old toad, the kind his nanny had thought were witches. A fat, squat old toad, hopping by and, admittedly a little bored with all the waiting, Napoleon followed it with fascination, as it bumble-stumbled over dirt and low-lying weeds and, yes, toadstools. Quite a distance he managed to track it, for as a head without a body, Napoleon’s peripheral vision had become quite remarkable.
Ignoring the way it hissed at him as it passed, croaked, “Say nothing of what you’ve seen. Say nothing to no one.”
“To anyone,” Napoleon whispered back, but point taken. He had no wish to antagonize a toad that could return and prove quite an adversary to fend off with a mere sedge weed.
For he had seen strange things upon his new throne, the stump. Much stranger than a toad—marching past in the dead of night, and no doubt in his mind that these fey beings would snuff him out in a blink had they noticed him among the weeds. So he’d held his breath until he’d felt faint, that he make no whisper of a sound.
These fey folks that he first thought he must be hallucinating, for they were the stuff of his nanny’s fairy tales, come out of the deep wood. Hundreds of hedgehog men, stern and forbidding, atop giant roosters. Huge upright badgers. Dangerous-looking nectar deer, larger than he’d ever seen, flying overhead. All manner of animal, great not small, and even a phalanx of not marmots but the shadows of marmots. Wraiths the equal of Crowley’s Emissaries. Things not seen or rumored of for centuries. All headed west at a stealthy yet rapid pace.
What could it mean? Nothing good. The Old Folk. The old magic. Another thing he was grateful his nanny had gone on about. How he wished he remembered more of it. But, then, she’d also told him not to grow up to be a soldier.
The road led to Paris, Napoleon knew that. If they stayed upon this old, grass-eaten track, they would soon approach the outskirts of Paris.
Even as it seemed all other armies descended upon Prague.
Of his own situation, Napoleon deflected his worry by imagining ambush. Of which way a force might travel through the woods to descend unnoticed upon his position. Of how sappers might be deployed, and trackers. What time of day would be best? (Brightest daylight, shining off his pale forehead.) How crucial would the role of clouds and shadows be in disguising the glint of armor or of rifle for his counterattack?
“Toad, stay awhile!”
A naked, frank pleading that surprised Napoleon. Given the nature of the toad.
But the toad was gone.
In its place, looming from the road, two pairs of worn boots filled with shadows as seen through the weeds. Across his face. There in the sun-soaked fire of stale afternoon.
“You’re late,” Napoleon said, hopeful. For it was crystal clear they’d seen him. If they were brigands, or the wrong brigands, he was done for regardless.
“We could have been later.” A woman’s voice. But was it the woman the Tuft had promised? (Of what the Speck had promised, his lips were, for now, sealed.)
“You’re lucky we’re here at all.” A man’s voice, deep. Napoleon imagined him as barrel-chested.
“My kingdom for a horse,” he said, but it came out feeble, ordinary. Half a kingdom for a body.
“You have no kingdom,” the one known as Mack said, stepping out of the sun.
“Woodpecker—tongue wrapped around brain. Such-like. Like-such. Must I say all the rest?”
The one known as Kristýna took his measure, arms folded. Finally, she said, “No. But if you are a wise man, you will remember that we are all you have. And if not … well, what’s been found can be lost again.”
Corsica, Waterloo, Moscow. All such a surprise. Destiny? He’d find out. But more than anything, he found to his surprise he had murder in his heart. He wished to do Crowley and his Wretch harm. Major harm. The type of damage they’d never recover from.
Napoleon smiled up at them and said, “I am at your mercy, my good friends.”
And so, mercifully, they took him from that place and vanished into the forest.