Cobweb Bride (27 page)

Well then, we are simply going to freeze to the
point
of death, but continue to move onward like toy soldiers, our bodies shutting down, burning with cold fire then growing numb, yet still imprisoning us. Not a bad prospect!

Lord help her, Percy was growing more amused with every mad thought. Indeed, this was insanity—and, at the same time, it was more cheerful and yet more depressing to contemplate than ordinary death that would have been so
final
. . . .

To stop herself from such morbid amusement, Percy glanced behind her and, in a low voice, asked how everyone was doing.

Several voices mumbled that they were all right, or tired, or simply cold.

Seated next to Percy this time, Lizabette wondered out loud if they were ever going to stop for the night—that is, when the night actually arrived.

“When it starts getting dark,” Percy said. “We still have at least three hours of daylight. See, the snow is starting to let up a bit.”

“Lordy, but how quiet it is!” Jenna suddenly said from the back of the cart.

And it was true. Everyone noticed that there were no more distant voices, no more baying of hounds echoing through the forest. Even the snowfall had slowed somewhat, and with it they had a return of slightly better visibility. Only the wind gusts continued their ragged whistle-song among the tree branches.

“The patrols must have gone home.” Regata was hunched over and holding the fur-trimmed edges of her hoodlet closely over her face.

“Or maybe they’ve stopped for a bite to eat.”

“Or maybe,” Percy said thoughtfully, “a changing of the guard.”

“They’re on rotation too!” Jenna giggled through her shawl, keeping her face from the most direct wind gusts.

“Hush!” Lizabette turned around and shoved the younger girl on the arm. Jenna quieted and put her mitten to her mouth.

But it was too late. . . .

In that instant, a terrible noise sounded from directly up ahead. It signified their greatest fear—a heavy weight of pounding iron hooves, ringing mail plate, the wild crackle of striking branches, and the angry neighing of more than one great war beast forced to plunge forward in an attack.
 . . .

“
Run!
” exclaimed Percy. “Everybody, run!”

The cart exploded with motion. The girls sprang up and scattered, many helping each other, some grabbing their small sacks of belongings. Semi-conscious Emilie was dragged down, together with her blanket, and carried bodily by Regata and Sibyl into the nearest shrubbery.

Vlau, his eyes flaring with life, momentarily froze with inaction. It seemed he was actually considering whether to stay and fight, because his hands reached for a non-existent sword at his side.

Good grief, is he a nobleman, or at least someone in the service of the upper crust? Well, that explains some things.
 . . .

He threw one maddened glance at Percy. But seeing her motioning him away wildly, he turned to his sole responsibility, his lifeless sister, and he picked her up and carried her in his arms, running into the forest.

Percy alone remained. Why? She was unsure. But Grial had asked her to do this, and Flor had thanked her, and she couldn’t exactly leave Betsy. . . .

Seated in the driver’s seat, latched onto Betsy’s reins with an iron grip, she held her breath. Her mind was reeling, and a brick of cold terror settled in her gut.

They were upon her in three heartbeats.

First, several running foot soldiers came crashing on both sides of the path, moving in parallel with it. In their wake, two mounted figures moved suddenly to cross it, and then—as though noticing the trail’s existence for the first time—immediately returned and entered the path directly. The first, on a bay horse, was a light rider in leathers, with a pale blue surcoat with Chidair crest and colors, over a chain hauberk, and bearing a lance.

Behind him, on a pure black charger, came
he
, fully plated, and helmed, dull ebony metal covering every inch of him, and nothing showing, not even eyes, under the lowered faceplate.

The black knight
.

As the others came thundering past, the lance bearer paused, seeing Percy, but the black knight motioned with his hand, and the rider moved onward, riding off the path and into the forest to hunt the others. The rest of them passed by like a thundering wave, and were gone.

It was thus that the black knight alone came to a stop before Percy and Betsy and the cart.

In that moment, a hard gust of wind whistled directly at her, and Percy shivered.
 . . .

The black war stallion, controlled by
his
great gauntleted hand, slowed to a measured walk, a monster becoming docile. It took three more paces, and then stilled, just a hand-span away from Betsy. It was a testament to how truly enormous the stallion was, that next to him, the thick-limbed draft horse appeared a tiny filly.

In the new silence Betsy snorted.

Percy stared directly ahead, and up at
him
.

And the black knight regarded her.

“Who are you, girl?” he asked, in a surprisingly soft and weary baritone. “Are you, too, a Cobweb Bride?”

Whatever it was about his voice,
something
, maybe the mortal weariness—Percy could not be sure—but it emboldened her, just so that she recollected herself enough to breathe.

“And what if I am?” she said in an unusually insolent voice, meanwhile amazed at herself, at her own, previously unheard-of intonation.

“Then regretfully I must take you with me.”

Percy felt a sort of breathless madness come to her, fill her head to bursting.
 . . . She tied off the reins, got down from the cart, and then walked forward to stand directly before him.

“And what if I refuse to go? What will you do, slay me on the spot, Sir Knight? Oh, wait, that does not work anymore.”

Gusts of wind blew in the pause of silence.

“You are trespassing,” he then said quietly. “What do you think should be done with you? Oh, wait, hacking your limbs off will still work.”

“Do you really need another disembodied arm or leg? Why not simply let me go? I’ll be on my way and out of your lands before you know it. My business, Sir Knight, is not with you but with Death and his Keep.”

Did she imagine it, or did the knight sigh?

“It is precisely for that reason why I may not allow you to go on. But—enough dawdling. Here, take my hand and come with me willingly, or be lifted up by the scruff of that shawl of yours. . . .” And speaking thus, he pressed his war stallion forward and bent down from the saddle to reach for her.

Percy reacted to the great black gauntlet moving in her face, and she sprang back with agility, and ended up behind Betsy, and then on the other side of the cart. While the immense weight of the metal plates of the knight made them clang together like wicked bells tolling, he and his war beast maneuvered around Betsy. As though they were a single giant entity, they went after her, deceptively slow and measured.

In wild desperation, Percy rummaged over the side of the cart, grabbing for anything she could think might serve as a weapon. Her hands fell upon a large cast-iron saucepan—another blessed gift from Ronna—and she took it by the handle.

In that instant, the black knight was upon her, and his giant gauntlets were clasping her shoulders and waist, lifting her as though she were a feather; and she felt herself tossed up to the front of his saddle.

And then, before she even knew what she was doing, Percy reacted. She swung the saucepan in a wild arc, barely missing her own head, and crashed it with all her strength against the black knight’s helmet—inches away from her face.

Holy Mother of God, but what did just happen?

The ice wind whistled, and there came a pause—as the knight went still suddenly, and in his embrace she could feel his body losing its iron cast, its solidity and resistance, and all his strength dissolved around her—in one impossible instant of awareness.

And then the black knight
fell
.

And she, still in his embrace, fell also, somehow still trapped by his weakened hold.
 . . . They crashed from the saddle onto the snow, he landing on the ground first, and she fortunately landing on top of him, instead of being crushed by what looked to be an anvil of black iron plate. . . .

Holy Mother of God.

Percy lay where she had fallen, still holding on to the skillet. She was stunned, but only for the duration of one breath, and then, disentangling herself from
his
cold metal arms, she crawled. The black warhorse had screamed then shied away, and was now prancing ten feet from Betsy, who continued standing calmly through the entirety of this incident.

The black knight lay on his back in the snow.

Panting hard, vapor curling from her lips, Percy stood up, ignoring a painful bruise on her knee, adjusting her fallen shawl, shaking snow powder from her dark tangled hair, all the while watching
his
great motionless shape, the limp gauntlets. . . .

She then dropped the saucepan and put her hands to her mouth.

“Did you kill him?”

An amazed whisper sounded behind her. And there was Gloria, followed by Niosta and Marie, covered in white powder and emerging from a snowdrift thicket.

“Percy! Holy Lord! Is he . . . dead? You
killed
the black knight! How? What did you
do?
”

“I don’t—I don’t know!” she was saying. And then, again reality hit hard.

“He is not dead, remember!” she exclaimed. “
Remember?
No one is dead!”

“So then—”

“He’s out cold, is what he is!” Percy picked up the heavy iron skillet and pointed at him with it. “I used this, got him on the head, somehow. So now he is going to wake up eventually, and ‘kill’
us!
”

“Oh no
 . . .” Marie whimpered.

“But before he does,” Percy continued, “we’re going to make sure he cannot hurt us or do anything to us.”

She approached the knight again, crouched beside him to check for signs of animation. “We need to tie him up, and quickly. . . . But first, let’s get him into the cart. . . . Help me, everyone!”

But it was easier said than done. The black knight weighed far more than an ordinary man, covered head to toe in metal plate as he was.

“Let’s strip him!” Flor emerged from hiding, coming from the other side of the path. “And hurry! The other hunters are still out there, and they already grabbed Catrine, Regata, and Sybil, and I think I saw them going after Lizabette—”

Niosta swore in foul gutter language. “My poor sis!”

But Percy and Gloria were already busy removing whatever portions of plate mail they could from the knight.

The first to come off was the helm. Percy raised his visor, bracing herself for the sight of a burly monster, and instead saw a pale bloodied face of a young man, surprisingly fine in appearance, with regular features, sculpted cheekbones and chestnut-brown wavy hair. Removing the helm altogether, she ascertained that not too much damage had been done by her blow with the saucepan. He had a minor bruise on his forehead, and a swollen lump on the right side of his head, above the back of the ear. Surely these wounds must have come about earlier, perpetrated by someone else.
 . . .

Altogether, he was still breathing.

As enough other pieces came off, they were able to lift him bodily at last, and the five of them together managed to drag him onto the cart, deep in the back.

“Get as much of this plate off him as possible,” said Percy, getting back into the driver’s seat. “And then tie his hands and feet, leave his woolens on, and put a blanket over him. Cover the armor too! Don’t leave any of it lying around, just in case his men come looking.”

“What of his fearsome horse? Should we shoo it away?”

Percy snorted. “You think you can? Anyone want to get up close to it? No?”

“Not me . . .” grumbled Niosta, using many loops of thick twine to bind the fallen knight’s wrists and ankles. “It can run back to hell if it wants to.”

At Percy’s careful urging, Betsy started walking forward again, directly at the war stallion. And her surprising determination made the much larger beast move backward, and then turn and gallop out of their way into the thicket, where they heard him neighing in fury and crashing through brush for several minutes—as though he were loath to abandon his fallen master.

“Lordy, Lord, what are we gonna do with him? I mean, it’s the
black knight!
” whispered Marie, in her teeny little voice with its funny accent, as they sat swaying in the cart. She had picked up the phrase “Lordy, Lord” from the others, and was now using it at every opportunity.

“Wait—where’s Jenna?” Percy suddenly felt a pang of fear. It was as if she’d left her mind back there in the snow
 . . . how could she have forgotten?