Fable: Blood of Heroes (17 page)

“Is it alive?” asked Winter.

Shroud poked it in the eye. Nothing happened. He tested the arms and legs. They swivelled stiffly on their stone pegs.

“All this fuss is over an old doll?” asked Glory.

“I wonder if the boy’s going to end up like this,” said Shroud.

Winter snatched the doll from his hands. “We’re not going to let that happen.”

“None of us understands how this transformation occurred,” Sterling said gently. “But fear not, Lady Winter. Once we’ve vanquished Yog and her servants, we shall find a way to restore Ben to his proper form.”

Motion caught Shroud’s eye. He turned and nocked an arrow to his bowstring before his mind fully registered why. The figures down the street were too far away to see clearly, but their movements were wrong.

Shroud had spent years studying movement, learning how to disappear in plain sight, to become just another sheep in the herd. Movement told you if a person was anxious or confident, strong or weak, alert or distracted. This group moved with a determined stride through the rain, but their body language wasn’t quite human. They were too twitchy.

The whisper of steel sliding from its sheath told him Sterling had seen them too. Glory swore and said, “Is that who I think it is?”

The Mayor hurried towards them, surrounded by a dozen men. At least, they had once been men.

The rain had stained their clothes a watery red. They had tied rags around their heads like crude bandages. Their shoulders were hunched high enough to touch their ears, and their exposed skin had taken on a sickly pallor, like they were covered in old bruises.

“I think he’s contesting the recall,” said Shroud.

Three to four opponents for each of the Heroes. Not an impossible fight by any means, but potentially painful, and in addition to watching out for those spears, they also had to worry about Yog’s cloud-borne assault.

The spears give them the advantage of reach, but they’re walking in mud and water, which means their balance will be poor. Stay together as a group. They can’t all attack at once, though the ones with spears can thrust past their comrades.

Shroud pulled the bowstring to his cheek and waited. Even for citizens of Grayrock, the approaching fighters were disorganised and chaotic. The Mayor barked orders but seemed as eager as the rest to wade in and lay about with the short club he had acquired. His broken arm hung limp against his side. “They’re moving like redcaps.”

“How is that possible?” asked Sterling. “The man was human when Glory threw—when he fell from his office window an hour ago.”

“The letter from Brightlodge said the greencaps were created by blood-tainted ale.” Glory pointed to the sky.

“It appears Yog has improved her formula. Stay out of the rain.” Shroud loosed the bowstring and shot the nearest guard. The razor-edged Trollfang Broadhead arrow dropped the man where he stood. Unfortunately, that seemed to be the signal for the rest of the mob to charge, shouting and laughing incoherently.

They didn’t bother trying to avoid the flaming apple Glory lobbed into their path, and the resulting explosion sent two guards to the ground.

Winter’s magic turned the road to ice, and three more fell hard. “This is
not
proper parliamentary process!”

Shroud tossed a handful of six-pronged caltrops into the street. These were the new M. Cole variety he had picked up two weeks ago in Brightlodge. The barbed tips ensured that not only would they stab through the thickest soles, they’d stick and inflict more damage with every step.

“Try not to kill them.” Sterling’s sword slashed out, removing the tip of a spear. He slammed the hilt into his opponent’s jaw.

“Now you tell us,” said Glory.

Try not to kill them? What kind of suicidal, bleeding-heart nonsense is that? A man comes at you with a weapon, you leave his corpse on the ground as a warning to others. In fact, you could argue that by killing the first fellow, you were
saving
the lives of everyone who ran away.

With the ethics sorted out, Shroud shot a second guard at point-blank range. The remaining men pressed in around them, leaving him no room to shoot properly. He snatched a knife from his sleeve and stepped forwards, moving inside the range of the spears and jabbing the tip of his blade at exposed limbs.

There was an artistry to this kind of fighting, a constant movement not dissimilar to a dance. Shroud flowed from one partner to the next, leaving each with a kiss of his knife that blossomed red. He kept Sterling’s sword in the edge of his vision to make sure he didn’t inadvertently dodge into the way, and did his best not to block the magic Winter and Glory flung.

The dance ended abruptly when the butt of a spear struck the side of his skull, knocking him to the ground. Shroud rolled back towards shelter, pausing only long enough to hamstring another guard. Unfortunately, that pause gave the Mayor time to snatch up a discarded spear and close in. Shroud waited as the Mayor raised the spear overhead, then rolled to one side. The tip sank into the ground beside him. Shroud wrapped his arm around the spear for support and slammed the heel of his boot directly into the man’s groin.

Whatever magic had changed these people, their anatomy remained human enough. The Mayor’s eyes bulged, and he hobbled backwards, squeaking like a wounded rat.

The remaining guards fled, laughing and bleeding. All total, seven men lay scattered on the ground, the majority of them still alive. For the moment.

That one with the knife wound to the belly won’t last long. Kinder to put him out of his misery.

Shroud stood and brushed himself off. The rain was thinning, and the drops falling from the sky had begun to lose their unnatural colouration. Reddish mud stained his cloak. Some of it had splashed his shirt and skin. Where the water touched his body, the flesh itched like a healing sunburn.

“How many others do you think …” Winter trailed off, gesturing at the dead and wounded guards.

“That depends on who among these people had the sense to come in out of the rain,” Glory said sourly. “Which means half the town could be transformed by now.”

“Now, now. You shouldn’t speak that way about your constituents,” Winter said. “Is everyone else all right?”

Sterling had lost a bit of skin from the knuckles of his left hand, and Winter was sporting what would soon be an impressive black eye, but they were otherwise unharmed.

“I most certainly am
not.
”

Shroud spun, knife ready to throw. The voice had come from the stone doll, which must have fallen into the mud during the battle. Shroud grabbed it around the waist and wiped it briskly against his cloak to clean the worst of the mud. The doll responded by kicking him on the wrist.

“Rubbing me into your armpit is hardly an improvement, you arse-faced goon,” the doll snapped. The stone head turned with a grinding sound, and the doll surveyed the carnage on the street. “A magestorm. I assume Yog is behind this?”

“That’s right,” said Sterling. “What do you know about her? Why was she searching for you?”

“Who
are
you?” Shroud interrupted.

“My name is Kas the Undying,” said the doll. “I am … I
was
 … Yog’s husband.”

CHAPTER 15

WINTER

Y
ou’re cute, but aren’t you a bit small for her?” asked Winter.

Kas studied each of them. His head turned stiffly, like that of a man crippled by arthritis. Every time he moved, the grating of stone against stone made Winter’s teeth clench. “She did this to me.”

“Why?”

“Because I finally saw the truth of what she was. What she had become. I tried to stop her. Yog didn’t take kindly to that.” He glanced at the moaning guards. “She’s improved her mixture since then.”

“What kind of poison did she use?” Shroud demanded.

“Not poison.” The doll chuckled, a sound like rattling pebbles. “Not exactly. It’s a potion she devised. She wanted a way to break the minds of Heroes, to reduce them to animals she could manipulate and control. She was always tinkering, trying to find a more effective blend. She never used to be able to deliver it in a magestorm, though. Last I remember, she was experimenting with frog secretions, thinking that might let the potion be absorbed through the skin.”

“We believe she’s using redcap blood,” said Shroud.

“That’s right. She once told me the first redcaps were a result of a bad batch, back when she was young.”

Winter stared. “Are you saying Yog
created
the redcaps?”

Kas made a shrugging motion with one arm. “Hard to say. She’d been around a long time when I met her, and her memory wasn’t the most reliable.”

One of the guards pushed himself to his hands and knees and reached for a spear. Winter casually froze his hands to the ground. “We thought you were dead when we dug you up. Or broken.”

“I was napping,” the doll snapped. “Until this buffoon dropped me in toxic muck.”

Shroud folded his arms. “If you’ve got a problem, I’d be happy to bury you and let you get back to your dirt nap.”

“Yog won’t stop now,” Kas continued. “The magestorm is only the beginning, to soften up her enemies. Next, she’ll send her Riders to attack the town.”

Winter nodded. “The nymph and the ogre.”

Kas stared. “An ogre? She’s fallen hard indeed.”

“We’ve sent them running once before,” said Sterling. “Should they dare to return, we’ll do so again!”

“Aye, but you weren’t fighting all these townsfolk last time, were you? Not to mention whatever other forces she might have gathered.” Kas looked around. “There should be a third Rider. Yog always said three was the number of power. She sought one with great strength of body, one who was the most skilled of their kind, and one with an indomitable Will. They held the spillover, the power she couldn’t contain within her own body.”

“We’ve received word from Brightlodge that the third Rider is a redcap,” said Sterling.

“Oh, Yog. What have the years done to you?”

“Does she really eat Heroes?” asked Winter.

“You’ve heard about that part, have you?” Kas nodded. “Heroes for their power, and children for their youth. I should have seen it sooner, but I didn’t want to believe. By the time I accepted the truth, she was almost unstoppable.”

“Almost?” Winter pressed.

“Her final meal was a Hero named William Grayrock. Bravest man I ever knew. He and I worked together to end Yog’s evil. William sacrificed himself, letting me take him to Yog as a prisoner. A ‘gift’ for my beloved wife. I poisoned him, cursed his very blood. When Yog feasted that night, she took the curse into herself. It weakened her body and splintered her power. But it wasn’t enough to stop her from doing this to me.”

Winter frowned. “How did you end up buried in the middle of Grayrock?”

“I don’t honestly know. I remember fleeing from Yog and her Riders, but these little legs don’t get you very far. I tried to use my magic to capture a mount. A hawk would have been ideal, but at that point, I’d have settled for a rabbit or a squirrel. I couldn’t do it. Preparing that spell for Yog had exhausted me. I passed out from exhaustion. Someone must have found me and assumed I was dead. I wouldn’t have been the first one Yog had done this to.” For the first time, Kas sounded uncertain. “How long was I buried?”

“Let’s just say you had the world’s best nap,” said Winter.

“Long enough for people to forget about Yog, and for Heroes to fade into legend until very recently,” added Glory. “Were you … awake that whole time?”

Kas shook his head. “Only in the beginning. I tried to call out, but the chest was too thick, and warded against magic. They must have been afraid Yog’s spell on me could spread to others like a disease. I realised I was likely to be down there a good long time. Long enough for wood to begin to rot. I used what power I had left to transform my body to stone, hoping that would preserve my body until someone dug me up,” said Kas. “After that, I mostly slept.”

Glory nodded. “Your power leaked. It changed the tree to stone as well. And the chest.”

“Interesting.” Kas looked around, as if searching for his former tomb. “If the wards on the chest were keyed to me personally, that connection could have caused it to transform.”

“Can you change yourself back?” Winter asked, thinking of Ben.

“You think I haven’t tried?” Kas raised his little stone arms in exasperation. “I saw Yog reverse this spell once, long ago. Thankfully, it’s not something she can do from a distance. Otherwise, had she suspected I still lived, she could have removed the spell and left me to be crushed to death by the roots of that damned tree. If we defeat Yog, if I could search through her hut to learn how she cast this curse, I
might
be able to restore myself.”

A child screamed from the quarry side of town. People were dying out there. Winter peered at the clouds. “Is the rain safe?”

“Yog’s magestorms expend most of their power in the first minutes,” said Kas. “But the dregs of her toxin will linger in the clouds and the rain a while longer. Probably not enough to transform you, but it could make you sick as dogs.”

“We can’t keep standing around waiting for the weather.” Winter spread her hands towards the sky. A chill crept through her veins, as if her blood had been replaced by water from the coldest mountain streams. She had pushed herself in the battle with the guards. But she should be able to provide a bit of safety without suffering full-blown iceburn. Hopefully.

She stepped out, and the falling rain around her slowed. The droplets turned to flakes of snow, which she brushed from her body. She could do this. Freezing the rain was a simple matter of freeing the cold inside her. “Much better. Now, let’s go save Grayrock!”

The town was in chaos.

Thankfully, it looked like most of the people had taken shelter from the storm, so few were affected as strongly as the Mayor and his guards. But enough had suffered the same fate to slow the Heroes’ progress. Winter maintained her sphere of cold the best she could while the others fought off twisted and raving men, women, children, and worse.

“Remember, these are innocent victims,” Sterling said.

“Innocent victims who are doing their best to kill us,” Shroud shot back. “Admittedly, their best is rather amateurish. No style at all.”

Glory set off a series of magical explosions in front of a trio of children. “Ex-humans are one thing. Do you expect me to hold back against
that
?”

That
was a large donkey charging drunkenly down the street, the fur of its scalp matted and bloody. Foam dribbled from its lips.

Shroud’s arrow took the animal in the throat. It stumbled and slid to a halt a short distance in front of them. “I vote no.”

“Back in the day, the toxic soup Yog brewed in her cauldron only affected people,” said Kas. “I’d love to know what she’s changed.”

From the rooftop ahead, a rain-soaked rooster let out a cry like an angry, flatulent trumpet. Bloody wings spread, it charged along the gutter towards them.

Winter dropped her protective sphere long enough to freeze the bird’s feathers. It stiffened, then toppled off the roof. “Too slow, little bird.”

Someone peeked out of a window as they passed. Sterling waved them back. “Stay inside your homes!”

To the west, part of the town appeared to be on fire, despite the rain. A pair of redcaps—true redcaps, not the partially transformed residents of Grayrock—chased a dog through the street. Winter froze the road directly in front of the redcaps. The first slipped, and the second tripped over the first, allowing the dog to scurry to the relative safety of a nearby home. Glory finished off the redcaps before they could rise.

“How did they get inside the walls?” asked Sterling.

Winter turned towards the distant flames. “They’re burning the buildings closest to the gates.” If redcaps had broken through, or if someone under Yog’s influence had opened the gate, it might be too late to stop them. “We have to get over there.”

Snow swirled around her as she ran. Yog’s storm had faded to little more than a drizzle now.

“Yog will know I’m free,” said Kas. “She’s got a vindictive streak as wide as the sea. If she gets her hands on me—”

“She won’t,” said Winter. “We’ll find a way to change you back. You and Ben both. Though you might be a bit wrinklier than you used to be, given how old …” She trailed off as she turned a corner and saw the source of the smoke and fire.

The metal gates were intact, but the stone wall of Grayrock was burning. The nymph, Skye, stood behind the gates, wreathed in flames. Directly in front of her sat what looked like a small catapult, manned by a pair of redcaps.

“That’d be Yog’s Rider of Will,” said Kas, twisting about to watch as more fire flew through the gate to ignite a nearby stable. “The core of the power comes from the Rider, but Yog will have strengthened her Will, making her even more dangerous. Yog can also see through her Riders’ eyes if she chooses.”

Shroud was already fitting an arrow to the string of his bow. Before he could shoot, one of the redcaps triggered the catapult, sending three missiles arcing over the wall.

Their flight was oddly slow and irregular. It wasn’t until they reached the apex of their arc that Winter realised Skye wasn’t launching rocks, but redcaps. They stretched out their arms and howled with laughter. They looked to be holding thick “wings” of woven pine branches, which they flapped with ever-increasing vigour as they plummeted towards the street.

“That looks like fun,” she commented.

“Wait for it,” said Shroud.

The makeshift wings didn’t do much. Two of the redcaps slammed to the ground, while the third bounced off a stone wall. That one didn’t get back up. Another scrambled out of sight behind a house. The last redcap pushed himself upright, wobbling from side to side. Blood dripped from his nose. “Gonnae nae do
tha
again!”

More catapults went off, launching redcaps into Grayrock in groups of three and four. Many had tied pine branches to their bodies in addition to their wings. They didn’t achieve anything close to true flight, but the branches did provide a little padding against the impact. Not every redcap survived, but the majority did, and they were roused to madness by the flames and the chaos.

“This age’s style of warfare is very different than it was in my time,” Kas said. “Are these common tactics?”

“If only,” said Winter.

One of the redcaps flew too low, and the flames on the wall touched his pine-branch wings. He survived the landing, but was too busy trying to extinguish the branches tied to his torso to present any immediate danger.

Shroud shot the next redcap in mid flight.

“Not bad.” Glory sniffed and tossed a red apple at another. The explosion flung the redcap backwards, and Skye had to step to the side to avoid being flattened by her own falling monster. Glory smiled.

“Nice … if you’re only going after one at a time.” Winter began to manipulate the raindrops, freezing them into tiny knives and flinging them at the closest redcaps. But for each one she stopped, two more flew over the wall and scampered into town.

Bells rang out from the Mayor’s tower. The remaining inhabitants poured from the nearby buildings, carrying whatever they could on their backs. One woman dragged what could have been her husband. He had obviously been affected by the cursed rain, and was bound hand and foot, with a gag stuffed into his mouth. But she hauled him along like an oversized sack of potatoes.

“What are you lot waiting for?” shouted a boy following along behind them. Their son, from the looks of him. “Don’t you hear the bells? That’s the Mayor giving the order to flee.”

“I did no such thing,” Glory said indignantly.

“Maybe someone impeached you while you were busy showing off,” said Winter.

“Whoever sounded the alarm might have had the right idea,” said Sterling. “Removing the civilians from the field of battle allows us to better concentrate on vanquishing our foes.”

Shroud glanced down at the doll. “Why is Yog so intent on destroying Grayrock and capturing you? Vengeance is one thing, but this seems excessive, and that’s coming from me.”

“Because of the curse,” said Kas. “I told you how William and I broke her power. Our spell was bound to the life and blood of William Grayrock, and this town was his home. His bloodline lives on in these walls. This place and its people are what keep the curse alive. So long as Grayrock is home to William’s descendants, Yog shall remain a shell of her former self, unable to consume the power of any Hero.”

“How many descendants?” asked Glory.

Kas chuckled. “Knowing him? I’d guess half the town traces their ancestry to his loins.”

“And now they’re abandoning Grayrock.” Winter studied the wooden ramp leading up to the gate, and to Skye. “The rest of you, keep the redcaps away from me.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Sterling.

“Beckett predicted Grayrock’s fall. I mean to prove him wrong.” Winter grinned. “Also, I want another shot at that nymph.”

“Take me with you,” said Kas.

Sterling frowned. “No slight intended, but you’re no longer the warrior you once were.”

“Aye, but I’m the only one among you who won’t be hurt by fire,” Kas snapped. “I know Yog and her power. I can aid the lass in this fight.”

“I agree with the doll,” said Glory. “You know it’s a bad idea letting Winter out unsupervised.”