The Banshee's Walk (22 page)

A glance down at the camp revealed the source of her agitation. Men were shouting and lights were moving up the hill toward us. Another horn blew, twice this time, and horses began to move.

I snatched up the staff, relieved that it didn’t cover me with fire or turn me inside out.

Buttercup let out the beginning of a long, loud banshee’s wail.

I didn’t bother to try and silence her. They’d seen the glowing staff fall and go dark. Men and horses were charging toward us. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t see us. They’d be all over us before we’d gone fifty paces.

Buttercup grabbed my hand, did her tiny jumping sidestep. Again, the ground tilted, trees appeared where there had been none a blink ago.

I whirled, found the torches, heard the men. We’d not covered much ground.

Buttercup wailed, skipped again.

She must have been getting weaker. We probably didn’t move more than a dozen paces.

“Go,” I said. I tried to let go of her hand, but she held on. “Shoo. Beat it. Go hide.”

She might not have understood the words, but she must have gleaned their meaning, because she set her jaw and jumped again.

When we landed, she fell gasping to the leaves.

Hooves thundered toward us.

Buttercup fell silent in mid-wail. Her eyes went wide. She lifted her left hand, pointing back toward the camp, and then she leaped toward me, her back to the torches and the men, burying her face in my ragged, soiled shirt.

The ground shook. There was a noise, a sound pitched so low and so powerful the first hint of it literally knocked the breath right out of me.

And then came the light.

The forest lit up, noonday bright, then brighter, brighter, and brighter still. I saw trees and leaves and then just limbs and trunks and then just a wash of pure white light, and the awful bass rumble that rose up from the earth grew louder, became a voice, and then a scream.

My eyes were closed. My fists were upon them. But the light blazed through skin and bone and just for an instant I saw something monstrous etched against it, something so large it took up a quarter of the sky.

It was a face. A face so thin and worn it was more bone than flesh. Its eyes were mere shadows, but its mouth was open, and from it that terrible sound shook the ground.

I may have screamed. I still don’t know.

The face looked down on me, from so far above, and I knew it could see me, that I could hide myself in the deepest darkest cavern but I would never be hidden from it, never escape its unblinking gaze.

It winked.

And then, there was silence.

Silence and darkness.

Or, more precisely, blindness and deafness. The light had left my eyes useless. The roaring word had left my ears ringing.

But I could still feel Buttercup, feel both her tiny hands on me, feel her trying to pull my limp bulk to safety.

I don’t remember much about the next half-hour or so. Buttercup led. I stumbled. Together we made our way through the forest. I made the acquaintance of several dozen sturdy trunks and a greater number of cruel whipping limbs.

But I’d begun to see a bit, and could hear my own labored breathing, before we encountered the first of the men in the woods.

Buttercup had the sense to stop and drop silent to the leaves. She struggled not to gasp. Her whole frame shook. She didn’t look up, or try to take my hand.

We got lucky, the first two times. I still couldn’t see or hear well enough to fight. The men we encountered weren’t much better off. I could hear them cussing, stumbling and running into oak trunks and ditches and each other.

I caught snatches of conversation too.

I heard one man breathlessly report to his fellows that the thing in the ground had stirred in its slumber. He was quick to note there wasn’t much left of the camp at the dig site. Even the steel chains and iron-shod wagon wheels had been melted into shiny iron puddles by the heat from the flash.

Someone asked if they were pulling out, and got told a resounding no. The dig had been resumed as soon as the fires were out.

In the wake of that news, I learned that more than one of the hired help was reconsidering the value of their employment.

“So am I, brother,” I mouthed, silently. Buttercup frowned at me and snuggled closer. At least she wasn’t trying to wax romantic anymore.

We lay there and waited. I kept Toadsticker under me so the blade wouldn’t give off a tell-tale gleam and give us away. I didn’t figure I’d be able to save us by swatting a horse’s ass twice in the same evening.

I wished for the thousandth time I’d kept my grip on the fallen sorcerer’s staff. Lady Werewilk might have been able to use it somehow. More importantly, if might have eventually told me who was paying the black-clad wand-wavers.

But I’d dropped it somewhere back in the forest a mile away and it might as well have been on the Moon. Neither Buttercup nor I was in any shape to think about trotting back for it.

I was far more worried about the diminutive banshee than myself. She was truly struggling. Her last banshee skip-hop had left her quivering and gasping, and we’d traveled just a few steps.

They’d been enough. But I wasn’t going to let her do that again, even if it meant facing down angry men in the dark.

I waited until the half-dozen men a dozen feet from us stomped away, grumbling and batting at low limbs. Then I caught Buttercup up and began to carry her.

She mewled protest at first, but then looped her arms around my neck and put her head on my shoulder and went fast asleep.

I navigated by guesswork and assumption. It’s a minor miracle I didn’t walk full into the Frontier that very night. But somehow I found the old road, and somehow I dodged the ragged patrols along it, and by the time the eastern sky was showing the very first blush of dawn I’d found the ring of trees and the secret door to the Werewilk tunnels.

The door was undisturbed. I’d left a couple of twigs propped against the opening. They were still there. I threw caution to the wind, mainly because I heard a pair of very distinct male voices nearby, and I stuck my head inside for a quick look.

No one knocked it off. I lay on my side and slid and wiggled onto the top of the stairs, and then I caught Buttercup’s still form by her arms and I dragged her beneath the earth as well.

She mumbled, but didn’t waken.

I took her quickly to the bottom of the stairs. I had nothing to put under her, except my ragged shirt, and given its state of scent and dampness it didn’t seem to be worth the time. In the end, I laid her down on the wet ground and promised her I’d hurry.

I hurried back up the stairs, and spent another eternity lowering the steel trap door, sure that the creaks and groans were drawing the attention of every surviving miscreant in the neighboring eighty miles. I swore if I survived I’d come back here and grease the damned works myself.

Finally, it closed. I sat there, my ear pressed to the damp steel, listening, but I never heard voices or footfalls.

We’d made it.

I sagged. Every bruise and cut and burn and welt fell upon me at once. My legs were pillars of aches. My head pounded. My ears still rang. I was thirsty enough to actually consider licking the cricket-covered walls.

But we were alive, my Buttercup and I.

I had to force myself to get off my butt and march down those stairs. “Keep moving,” I said aloud. “You stop now you’ll never get back up.”

Buttercup stirred when I spoke, but still didn’t wake. Her tiny hands moved, though, fluttering and grasping, as though searching for something in her sleep.

For the first time, it dawned on me that I was bringing a living, breathing banshee into the world.

I pondered that, while I got a fresh torch lit. Rannit wasn’t any place for any folk that even had the faintest hint of Fae in their features.

All Buttercup needed was a pair of dainty wings, and she could pass for a sprite or a dale elf.

I stooped and scooped her up. She was limp, like a basket of rags, and that was a good estimate of her weight.

“What am I going to do with you, Buttercup?” I asked. My voice echoed in the shadows.

It was a long way back to the House. I’d spend most of it crawling. My poor sleepy banshee was about to be literally dragged through the mud.

“First thing we do is bathe,” I noted. Buttercup wrinkled her tiny nose.

I sighed and cussed and set out. The fat black crickets watched me go.

Chapter Fifteen

Buttercup slept through the whole wretched journey. I wasn’t so lucky.

I was nearly exhausted to the point of just sleeping where I lay myself, despite the cold mud. Instead I set a steady rhythm—push the torch ahead. Crawl back. Grab Buttercup’s wrists. Drag her forward. Crawl back to the torch. Push it ahead.

And repeat, over and over and over.

If the first time through the collapsed portion of the tunnel had taken hours, this one took lifetimes. But somehow, we made it.

I found an old blanket in a chest and wrapped the banshee in it, since the rest of the tunnel would allow me to stand and carry her. Still, she showed no sign of waking, despite being dragged and held and carried.

I hoped she wasn’t injured in some way I couldn’t see. There was no way for me to know what a good dose of that blue light might have done to her.

I pressed on. I nearly fell myself a time or two, just from carelessness and fatigue.

I was nearly to the stairs below the kitchen when I came to Gertriss.

She too was fast asleep, seated in a wooden chair, a sword across her lap. She was snoring, lightly and daintily.

I shifted Buttercup, checked her face. She was still in the grip of a deep slumber. For the first time I was glad—I wasn’t sure of a lot of things, but I was sure I lacked the strength to wrestle with a panicked banshee no matter how small her stature.

I covered Buttercup’s face with a fold of the blanket, just in case.

“No napping during office hours,” I said. I kept my voice low. Gertriss didn’t stir.

I nudged her right foot with mine.

Her eyes flew open.

“Easy,” I said, quickly. “No loud voices, no sudden moves. I brought company.”

Gertriss stood. Her sword clattered to the damp ground. I cringed, but Buttercup didn’t stir.

“I thought you were dead, Mr. Markhat,” she whispered. “What have you got? Is that a child? Is she hurt?”

“Me? Dead? I hardly ever get killed these days, Miss. And this is Buttercup. She’s probably older than all of us added together. And as for hurt, I don’t know—I think she’s just exhausted. We had quite a night.”

I shut up. Gertriss wasn’t listening. She’d pulled back a bit of blanket, and was getting her first good look at the not-quite-so-mythical banshee.

“Well I’ll be damned.”

“Miss, you’ll never get invited to any of the best society teas, talking like that.” I was ready to drop. “Think you can carry her upstairs? I’m spent.”

Gertriss lifted the blanket a little higher and went wide-eyed. “Mister Markhat—she’s starkers!”

“I’m going to go broke buying up wardrobes for naked women,” I said. My arms were beginning to shake. Hell, all of me was. “Burlap was the best I could do.”

Gertriss took Buttercup from me. Still, the banshee slept, not even stirring.

“Where are we going to put her? What’s she going to do when she wakes up?”

“Put her in my room. Can you get upstairs without raising half the House?”

Gertriss snorted in derision. “Nobody but the cooks stirring. Laziest bunch I’ve ever seen.”

We both started walking for the stairs. I could see light from above. Gertriss had left the trap door open. As we neared, clanging and clanking and voices sounded from the kitchen.

“Seems they had a party last night,” I said.

Gertriss nodded. “That was my idea. Keep that lot in the woods looking at the House. Was trying to give you a distraction.”

I managed a grin. “It worked. Remind me to give you a raise.”

We halted at the bottom of the stairs. I looked up them. My legs begged me to sit down for a year or two and rest.

“Up we go,” I said. I could smell bacon, hear it sizzle and pop, smell strong hot coffee brewing. “Remember, if anyone asks, Buttercup here is our secret love-child.”

Gertriss laughed, gently arranged the cloth so that Buttercup was covered, and we ascended wearily into the light.

We made it up to my room without raising a single eyebrow. Oh, the pair of cooks gave us a good sideways glare as we sidled around the cook-stove and I happened to snatch up a couple of biscuits and a handful of bacon to keep them warm, but neither of them spoke a word to us. Not even when I liberated a pitcher of clean water and a chunk of salted ham.

The House beyond the kitchen was quiet. Even the ever-present dogs, that lay slumbering three to a couch, did no more than glance our way as we passed.

I pondered that. I know they smelled Buttercup, who possessed the kind of body odor only lifelong non-bathers could achieve.

But they didn’t react.

Probably because they were accustomed to her presence.

Once I closed the door behind me, I crossed to the big cushioned chair and collapsed down into it. Gertriss laid Buttercup out on the settee, kneeled on the floor beside her and fixed me in a piercing Hog stare.

“That was mean of you, sneaking off like that.”

I munched biscuit, gulped water.

“Had to. Two bodies would have been spotted.”

The word she gave in response was not a word which Mama would approve.

“So what happened? What did you see?”

I laid it out between bites. The soldiers, the sorcerers, the excavation, Buttercup, the face in the sky. All of it.

I had hoped it would make sense, when I laid it out. It didn’t.

What the Hell had I seen?

“We saw the flash and heard the thunder,” said Gertriss. “Rather, they saw the flash, and we heard the thunder. I was in the tunnel, convinced my boss was dead.”

I groaned inwardly, knowing I’d never hear the last of that particular jibe.

Buttercup shifted in her sleep. Gertriss watched her for a moment, then wrinkled her nose in disgust.