Dark Jenny

TWENTY-THREE

Through the trees I saw movement on the road that led only here: three men on horseback. In a moment they’d reach the clearing, and I sat in plain view. I had no time to make it to the cottage, where my sword still leaned against the wall, so I threw myself flat in the bed of the wagon. I pulled the hat over my face and crossed my ankles so that if they did see me, they might think I was some sleeping farmer. Since I still wore expensive, if dusty and wrinkled, court clothes, it was one of my weaker disguises.

None of the riders spoke as they approached. Their spurs jingled, and leather armor creaked. I expected to hear Tom Gillian’s voice saying I’d missed my deadline, and he was here to collect my head. I hoped I’d have time to explain.

One of the three dismounted, groaned as if he’d been in the saddle a long time, and said, “Now what?”

A familiar distorted voice replied, “Sped out. Ib dey try anything, kill dem.”

I felt a huge rush of relief that it wasn’t Gillian. I hadn’t realized how truly scared of him I was until then.

“But Kern’s a wizard,” said a voice I now recognized as Cador’s. “He probably already knows we’re coming. He probably knows why we’re coming.”

“Don’ be a candy ass,” Agravaine snapped. “He’s juss an obe man. He’s gop as much ‘magic’ as I hab in my ass.”

Hoel, the one who’d dismounted, yelled, “Hey, Cameron Kern! Come out in the name of King Marcus Drake, and bring the man LaCrosse with you!”

I risked lifting the hat’s brim. I couldn’t see them over the side of the wagon.

When there was no reply, Agravaine said, “Ty abain.”

“Cameron Kern, this is Sir Vincent Hoel of the Knights of the Double Tarn! I order you and LaCrosse to appear in the name of the king!”

At last the cottage door squeaked open. Cador gasped, “Shit!”

“The cave isn’t open today,” Amelia said. Her sheer presence froze the three knights in their tracks. “Hold on and I’ll get you free tokens for your trouble.”

Another pair of boots hit the ground. Careful not to make the wagon squeak, I rose enough to see that Agravaine now stood beside Hoel, both of them in front of Amelia. Agravaine looked even more squat and dwarfish with her towering over him, her robe cinched tight against her showstopping form.

“Whez Kamera Kerr?” Agravaine demanded.

She scratched the side of her head and frowned, as if thinking was a real effort. “Who?”

“Kerr, Kamera Kerr!”

“I can’t understand you,” she said sincerely.

With no warning he punched her. Hard. In the face, just as I’d punched him. He had to raise on tiptoe to do it. It knocked her back into the house, and I heard her big body thud to the floor.

Hoel and Cador laughed. “Damn, that’s a big bitch,” Cador said.

“Get between those legs, she’d snap you in half,” agreed Hoel. “You can have her first.”

“Only if she’s tied down safe,” Cador said, laughing.

“Kerr!” Agravaine yelled again. “Geb your ass oub heb!”

They still hadn’t noticed me. Kern stepped past Amelia and emerged into the sunlight completely naked, his portly body as white as his hair. It had the desired effect of catching the three knights off guard. “David Agravaine,” Kern said flatly, fists on his hips. “Still punching women, I see.”

“Shut ub. Where is he?”

He scowled. “What’s the matter with your nose?”

“Fubbett my nobe. Where is dat son of a bid?”

He glanced over his shoulder, where Amelia sat catching the blood from her nose with a pillow. “‘Bid’? What is a ‘bid’?”

Agravaine was almost hopping with anger now, and he whipped out his sword with a furious flourish. “Donb you fub with me, Kerr!”

Kern laughed and crossed his arms above his belly. “I’m sorry, first you punch an unarmed woman, then you draw a sword on a naked man? You’ve always been crazy, Agravaine, but now you’re really losing it.”

Agravaine swung the sword at Kern’s head, but the old man simply leaned back to dodge it. The momentum made Agravaine spin in place and almost fall. Cador chuckled.

Kern risked a glance in my direction. He was clearly buying time for me to stage a rescue. I wished I had his confidence in my abilities.

I looked around the wagon bed for anything that might help. I saw an old apple core and carefully picked it up. If I could add to the confusion, I might be able to contribute something useful. But I’d have to use my left hand. I lined up on Cador, the only one still in the saddle, and threw the apple as hard as I could at the horse’s rump.

The horse immediately tried to rear and spun in place as Cador fought for control. “Whoa!” he cried. “What the hell?”

Everyone turned to me, and I had only a moment to think. In my Lord Huckleberry voice I said, “What is the meaning of all this ballyhoo? Can’t a man take his morning nap in peace?”

Agravaine and Hoel exchanged a puzzled look. As I hoped, they didn’t recognize me at first without my beard. I hopped daintily from the wagon, tucked my cast behind my back, and brushed at the dust on my clothes with my good hand. “My goodness, men hitting women, old men in the altogether, and three Knights of the Double Tarn in the midst of it? King Marcus will not be pleased, I assure you. Oh, it will drive him to a royal tizzy!”

Kern played it perfectly, drawing their attention back to him as I minced closer. He said, “I’m going back to bed, Agravaine, after I tend to my girlfriend’s nose. If you want to talk like a human being, come back tomorrow without your goon squad.”

“Don’t you turn your back on me!” Agravaine screeched. His sword flashed in the sun as he raised it over his head.

I grabbed the hilt of Hoel’s sword with my left hand and snatched it from its scabbard. Before he knew it, I’d transferred it to my right and snapped it into the cast. I closed my fingers around it; they hurt a little, but not as much as the day before. I swung it low at the backs of Hoel’s legs as he turned and felt it bite through the muscles and tendons of his nearest calf. He screamed and fell.

Then a lot happened quickly.

Agravaine spun in midswing, finally realized who I was, and came at me spitting like a rabid wolverine. I could imagine how terrifying he was in battle. Still, he was out of control and I wasn’t. I parried his wild blow and grabbed his hair with my good hand. I brought his face down and my knee up, and they met with a satisfying thud.

As he fell, I spun toward the still-mounted Cador. He’d drawn his sword but his nerve failed him. Hoel’s ongoing high-pitched screams helped a little, I’m sure. He threw his sword away, turned the horse, and spurred it toward the road.

He never made it. As he rode along the edge of the clearing, something rumbled and roared in the forest. A blast of steam shot from the ground diagonally across his path. If Kern hadn’t told me its source, I’d have thought it was a dragon, too. Cador’s already skittish horse reared again.

Then there was a loud twang, and an arrow struck deep between Cador’s shoulder blades. He fell, arms and legs wide, and his horse fled. I turned and saw Amelia standing with a bow in the cottage doorway. Her face was streaked with blood, but her expression was calm. When I looked back, Cador hadn’t moved; I knew he never would again.

Agravaine rose on all fours. My knee had split the skin between his eyebrows and blood ran down either side of his ruined nose like red tears.

“You’re deb now,” he hissed wetly. “You kibbed a Knibe of de Dubba Tawn.”

Kern grabbed Agravaine by the back of the neck and yanked him to his feet. The cords on the old man’s forearm stood out as he dug in his fingers; the giggleweed softness was gone. He held him so high only Agravaine’s toes reached the ground. “Dave, you little pissant, you really should learn some manners. And don’t pretend you’re doing any of this out of loyalty to Marcus. Now tell me who sent you here and why.”

Agravaine said nothing. The red streaks on his face, along with the purple-and-yellow lump where his nose used to be, made him look like a war-painted savage. His breath hissed through his teeth.

Without releasing him, Kern bent and picked up the knight’s dropped sword. He put the blade against Agravaine’s throat. “You punched my girlfriend in the face, Dave. I’m not feeling charitable. Answer me.”

For a moment everyone was silent except for Hoel and his high-pitched whimpering. I’d seen enough men hamstrung in battle to have an idea of the pain, and I wished I’d done it to Agravaine, too. I flexed my fingers around the sword hilt: even with the cast, my grip felt strong and solid.

“What’s all the shouting about?” a new sleepy voice said.

Jenny stood beside Amelia in the doorway. She wore a robe that dragged the ground and clearly belonged to the taller woman. Jenny looked giggleweed-addled and confused. “What happened? Who are these people?”

Agravaine made a sound unlike anything I’d ever heard, a kind of childish, disappointed whine distorted by his broken nose. He legs went limp, and his dead weight dropped from Kern’s grasp. He landed on his knees and lowered his head at once.

“Your Majesty,” he whispered.

Jenny blinked a few times, looked at him, and said, “I’m sorry… do I know you?”

“Go back inside,” I said an instant too late.

With a wet shriek of rage, Agravaine exploded from his crouch and sprang at her so quickly none of us could stop him. He yanked a dagger from his belt and drove it into Jenny’s midsection with enough force to knock her back into the doorjamb.

Amelia grabbed him by the collar and shoved him away. He held on to his knife as he flew back; it left an arc of blood through the air. He landed on his butt and slid in the grass. He slapped the ground and screamed, “You know me now, you bid?” like a little boy having a tantrum. “Do you?”

Amelia caught Jenny as she fell. Jenny’s eyes were open wide and she stared down at the wound, which had just begun to bleed. Amelia slapped her hand over it and said with reasonable calm, “Cammy!”

Agravaine was still screeching, “Do you know me? Do you know me?” He switched his grip on the knife and started to get to his feet.

He never got the chance. I whacked him in the side of the head with my bad hand, using the weight of cast and sword for added impact. He fell back flat, and I straddled his chest. With my good hand I snatched the knife away and tossed it out of reach.

“I stuck it in her,” he hissed with a crazed smile. “Did you see that? I gabe it to her good.”

His hateful bloody grin caused something I’d thought long extinguished in me to flare back to life. I raised Hoel’s sword above my head and repeatedly pounded Agravaine’s face with the heavy pommel. My voice rose to an unintelligible screech of rage and fury. I saw in Dave Agravaine every bullying, smug, ignorant soldier I’d ever met. Or ever been.

I stopped when the cast on my hand cracked and fell away, except for a cup-shaped piece pinned between my palm and sword hilt. I sat there breathing, which seemed at the moment to take all my strength. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been hitting him, but not only was Agravaine dead, his face was pounded to unrecognizable red mush with pieces of white bone around the edges.

I’d felt like this before in the heat of battle, but always at a professional distance; this was the first time I recalled this level of rage directed at someone for personal reasons. I stared at the ruin of Agravaine’s face; one lifeless eyeball suddenly popped up from the blood pooled over its socket. I almost threw up.

Instead I got to my feet. “Always pay the insurance,” I hissed to myself, and decapitated Agravaine for good measure. Watching his head roll over while his body stayed in place felt better than it had any right to feel.

The smell hit me then. I choked down another surge of bile. I’d forgotten the coppery, raw-meat odor of violent death.

Hoel sat on the ground clutching his injured leg, his fingers soaked with blood. He stared at me as if I were some supernatural monster. Now that was something: my battle rage had scared a Knight of the Double Tarn.

I pointed the sword, his sword, the pommel still dripping Agravaine’s blood, at him. “You.”

His words tumbled out as he tried to scoot away. “Wait, it was all Dave’s doing, we were just following orders, we didn’t know the queen would be here-”

“Shut up,” I said. I wasn’t sure it was audible, but it must’ve been because Hoel did it.

I felt a droplet of Agravaine’s blood drip from my sword hand to the grass. My arm did not waver. “I have,” I said quietly, “some questions for you.”

“I think they can wait,” Kern said from the cottage door.