Fool's Gold (14 page)

The crowd watched him, turned back to Mattrax, took stock of exactly how fucked they were, and ran like Lawl had set all the demons of the Hallows upon them. Lette could see Firkin bobbing and flailing in their midst, howling along with all the rest of them.

But she did not run. She did not even back carefully away from the stone ledge.

Because the cave was open. Mattrax stood directly atop his pressure plate, screaming and roaring at the retreating villagers. Behind him the cave entrance was wide open. The portcullis that guarded it stood wide open, a beckoning black maw.

She could see the black iron chain that held the gate to its counterweights, each link thicker than her waist, disappearing down through a hole carved into the rocky floor. She could fit in there. She could do exactly what she had come here to do.

She just had to get past the notice of Mattrax and the guards first. And there was no time to sneak, no time for subtlety, no time for anything but putting her head down and running hard.

The only real drawback of the plan that she could see was that it was complete and utter suicide.

She pressed into the cliff face. In a moment it wouldn't matter anyway. The guards were going to spot her, point her out to Mattrax, and she would be looking at the inside of his gullet within moments.

All because I trusted a plan a farmer came up with.
She shook her head.
I should have told him to shove his plan, and whisk me off to some new farm so we could roll in the hay and raise pigs.

The thought came unbidden, but before she had a chance to beat it back into whatever dark corner of her subconscious it had crawled from, a noise came from above like a pair of massive bellows filling. She glanced up. Mattrax was breathing in, the air seeming to catch in his gullet.

Oh, all the gods' hex upon it, she knew what happened next.

Mattrax exhaled.

A roaring sheet of flame filled the world, whistling past her, scorching her skin. It raced after the fleeing villagers. It smashed through Mattrax's own guards. She heard screams, saw someone staggering out of the blast, skin sloughing away from bone.

For a moment she was paralyzed, held in place by the horror of it, the magnificence. So much power. Such raw rage excising life from the land. And then she realized: This was it. This was the moment she was waiting for.

She put her head down. She ran. She shot past Mattrax, past the cave entrance, and straight to that dark, dank hole into which the portcullis chain disappeared. No guard cried out. No guard pointed and screamed. They were all too busy being roasted alive by their infuriated master.

She slammed into the chain, grabbed a handhold. And then, lithe as an eel, slipped down into darkness and safety.

Like all castles, Mattrax's mountain fort had been constructed with one goal in mind: to repel attackers. A series of walls surrounded the keep, each protected by a gate offset from the one before, the layout of which would force assailants to zigzag back and forth, taking the longest path possible, all the time suffering the withering blows of the castle's defenders.

An additional consequence of this strategy, Will discovered, was that it made it painfully difficult to drag a dead cow through the place. The experience, he was finding, was making him significantly less fond of Ethel.

“Thrice-cursed daughter of a cow whore,” he muttered as he tried to get a better grip on her hoof. “Why did I ever feed you any single extra grain of corn? You fat fucking…” He descended into muttered curses.

“I don't know what you're complaining about,” Quirk grumbled, shoving her shoulder into Ethel's dragging arse once more. “You're a farmer. Physical labor is what you do all day. I'm built for academia.”

“Aren't you a wizard or something?” Will was increasingly skeptical of this. He'd seen her brew her potions, to be sure, but alchemy and a working knowledge of herbalism was not summoning mystical forces and spitting in the eye of the gods' immutable laws. Still, it seemed like the sort of thing that could really help them out now. “Can't you cast a spell and make the cow float or something?”

“I am trying,” Quirk said, face buried in Ethel's backside as her feet dug at the ground, “to give that up.”

“What the hell does that even mean?” Will asked. “What sort of wizard doesn't want to cast spells? Isn't that the whole point? Power and riches summoned by eldritch forces?”

“The sort,” Quirk snapped, “that has a functioning moral compass.”

“You're here to rob a dragon!”

Quirk popped her head up over Ethel's rump and eyeballed him very hard indeed.

Will became abruptly aware that he was wearing a dead man's armor, standing beside a dead, drugged cow in the center of the enemy's castle, surrounded by guards armed with a large assortment of pointy metal. Quirk's eyebrow slowly inched its way up her forehead.

Will ducked his head and started heaving on Ethel's forehoof.

They had navigated the second of the three gates that led to the keep when it became abruptly apparent that something was very much awry. Will's first clue was a roar so loud that the ground shook. Ethel's dead flesh quivered with the force of it.

Will and Quirk locked eyes immediately. Barely controlled panic reflected barely controlled panic. Will took a breath, did a quick mental inventory of the steps in his plan. And yes, he was sure. There was no point that called for the bellowing of an enraged dragon. In fact almost every step of the plan was aimed at completely avoiding that outcome. Something was very, very wrong.

“Do we bail?” Quirk whispered, once whispers were audible once more.

Before he could answer, there came a rushing, whispering, roar. The sound of fire. The sound of Mattrax incinerating someone.

Lette!

No.
He shook his head.
No, she couldn't be dead. She was too smart, too tough for this.

It's your fault,
said a small voice in the back of his head.
This is your plan.

No
. He shook his head.
I was trying to talk them out of it.

Yeah, great job you did there. The way you told them the exact plan that you and Firkin used to discuss. That was a great way to tell them not to do it. And now Lette's dead. You should have told her to shove the plan, and then whisked her off to some new farm so you could roll in the hay and raise pigs.

She's
not
dead.

“Will!” Quirk's whisper forced its way into his consciousness. “Do we bail?” She looked down at the cow, back at the gate.

Will hesitated.

“Gods' hex on it,” said Quirk, “this isn't worth it. I'm—”

“No,” Will snapped. Quirk froze.

“We have to leave,” she implored him. “Something has gone very wrong.”

Will nodded slightly. That did seem like the most likely turn of events. “But,” he said, “I'm not sure how us dropping everything and running screaming for the hills makes us seem less suspicious.”

Quirk chewed on her lip.

“We stick to the plan,” he said. “We feed Mattrax Ethel. We hide in the vault while he passes out, and we see if we can still meet up with Lette.”

“And if we can't?” Quirk's wide eyes and skittering fingers made it clear she didn't really think that this was a question.

“Then,” Will hissed, “we're still in a vault full of gold with an unconscious dragon.” He tried to keep his temper under control. He wanted to be the one panicking. It wasn't fair that Quirk was taking up all the panicking time that they had. “We shove our pockets full of coin, you take your measurements, or whatever it is you want, and we sneak back out through the castle under cover of darkness.”

Quirk hesitated. Will wanted to go over and shake her. “It's the only way,” he told her. Because it was.

Still Quirk vacillated. Will decided actions spoke louder than words. He grabbed the hoof once more. “Come on,” he said, starting to heave. A moment later he felt Quirk throw her weight into the cow's back end. They recommenced their crawling pace forward.

Will breathed a sigh of relief. While disaster seemed to have fallen, they had at least avoided compounding the issue.

“You,” barked a voice from behind them. “Stop what you're doing right fucking now.”

Of course,
thought Will.
I forgot. The gods hate me. Lawl, Betra, Klink, Toil, Cois, Knole, even absent Barph—the whole bloody lot of them. Sitting up in the heavens, they have hexed me and each and every element of my life. They have marched through kicking and shrieking, trying to make sure they've covered every conceivable way to screw me.
Will found that he almost admired their thoroughness. It truly was divine.

He turned slowly. Quirk still had her shoulder to Ethel's rump, her feet still pushing at the ground. Still desperately fighting against reality.

She went nowhere.

The soldier bore down on them. He was a large man, the noseguard of his helmet bent askew, and a large livid red weal where Will had flung soup into his face several nights before.

Will froze, tried to swallow against the sudden dryness of his throat, failed. A tiny overture of discomfort heralding the pain to come.

The soldier cuffed Quirk over the back of the head. “Did I or did I not tell you to get your face out of the arse-end of that cow?”

Quirk turned abruptly, and Will was surprised to see her fists were balled. Where was the pacifist now when he needed her? This was not the moment to start a fistfight. This was, in fact, pretty much the opposite of that moment. This was the moment when they desperately, desperately needed to go unnoticed.

Then the soldier's eyebrows arched. Quirk stumbled, managed to turn the raising of fists into a pathetic salute. The soldier sneered. Will tried his best to turn away.

“Mattrax has had another of his hissy fits,” the soldier said finally. “Going to need more guards down on his portcullis.” He pointed to Quirk. “Move your arse.”

Quirk remained frozen in her salute, a look of mounting horror on her face. “But…” she said, “the cow. For Mattrax. It is. I mean it is for him. It's his supper.”

No!
Will wanted to shout at her.
Shut up! Agree! Nod. Smile. Do anything you have to do to get him to leave and to take all his attention with you.

Brilliant idea,
said the smaller, more hateful voice that resided behind the panicky one.
Leave yourself alone in the castle. Try and haul Ethel by yourself. Gods, you are absolutely chock full of terrible ideas, aren't you?

Quirk was still frozen, as if some part of her anatomy had glitched, a piece of the clockwork of life come undone, and the artifice of the whole charade suddenly revealed.

“This cow is Mattrax's dinner?” said the soldier without any apparent concern. “Well, let me take a moment to see if I give the slightest of fucks.” He placed a finger on his chin. “Nope. Appear to be all out of fucks.” He leaned in, his undamaged cheek turning as red as the burned one. “I told you to get your maggoty little arse down to the gate before I deliver you there in a bloody gods-hexed pile! Am I bloody clear?”

Quirk took an involuntary step away from both the soldier's flying spittle and Ethel. She looked at Will imploringly.

He was going to have to do it. He was going to have to open his mouth.

“I really need—” he started, dropping his voice an octave.

The soldier backhanded him without looking, the metal of his gauntlet splitting Will's lip. “You need to learn to shut up when you're not being spoken to. And—” He paused, considered, then finally turned to Will. Will's heart stopped for a moment, then appeared to decide to try to bore a way out of his rib cage.

“—as funny as it would be,” the soldier went on, “to watch your stupid arse try and do this on your own, you probably try to remember the invention of the fucking handcart.” He shook his head sadly. “You country recruits. I swear you get stupider every batch we pull in.” And he turned away without giving Will a second glance, saw Quirk still staring at him.

“Well?” He veritably exploded. “What gave you the impression you should still be bloody standing there? Move!” And finally Quirk did, going back the way they had come, almost at a run, casting distressed looks back at Will.

Will sagged against Ethel, then realized that moment hadn't arrived yet. The soldier still stood a few paces from him, staring at Quirk's strange retreat. He shook his head again.

“Barph's hex on their brains,” he said quietly. And then strode away.

The soldiers of Mattrax's castle were, Will discovered, no more full of the milk of human kindness when they were at home and helping out their fellows. In fact, whatever milk they were filled with, Will suspected it was spiked with bile and tasted much like fermented piss. Requests for directions to the much-rumored handcarts were met with blank stares at best, and long tirades about his dubious parentage at worst. It was late afternoon by the time he finally found them. There was no way to get Ethel on without hacking her to pieces, and while Will had some experience at butchery, a blunt soldier's sword was not the ideal tool for the job. On the plus side, by the time he was done there was no way to notice the bloodstain that marked the fate of his armor's previous owner in among all the others.

The sun was low in the sky as he squelched toward the keep, leaving dark red footprints in his wake. His passage drew enough attention to make his hands shake, but all the soldiers gave him a wide berth.

What was I thinking?
he asked himself as he trundled the remains of Ethel and her wake of attendant flies through the keep's main gates.
I'm a farmer. Not a thief. This is absolute madness.

He looked around the main entrance hall of the keep. Half-remembered conversations with Firkin flickered through his memory. Down. He remembered that Firkin had known that there was a path down here.

Not just a path. A ramp.

He saw it, off to his left, a torchlit archway, a spiraling floor that led down and away.

Would this make Firkin happy? Should he have brought the old man in here, somehow? It was an impossible dream. No subterfuge would have been possible with Firkin in tow. But… could seeing this plan finally put into practice heal whatever wound it was that kept driving the old man back to the bottle?

There was no way to know, and no time to ponder. So Will just went through the archway and into a spiraling descent. The path led down. And down. And down. Torches set into rough iron brackets in the wall seemed spaced farther and farther apart. Their flames spat and flickered. Soot stained the walls around them.

What was left of Ethel was beginning to smell. Not the natural, bloody smell of fresh meat either. There was a slightly-too-sweet tang to the odor rising from her. Unconscious flies littered the handcart. The Snag Weed was working.

Glancing behind him, Will hesitated. Down in the valley, Quirk had given him a final vial of the potion to rub into the meat before it was delivered to Mattrax. A just-in-case backup to ensure full perfusion.

What if it's not enough?
nagged the voice in the back of Will's head.
Quirk had no sense for how big Mattrax is. She doesn't know anything about dragons. What if he digests food differently?
Will didn't know much anatomy, but he knew enough about animal husbandry to know that most creatures were unwieldy bastards who delighted in fouling human plans.

Again, none of those thoughts helped. He was committed now. He upended the vial of potion, let the contents glug out over the meat. Quickly he rubbed it into the meat, fresh blood squeezing between his fingers. When he regripped the cart's handle, it felt slippery beneath his slick fingers.

Trying to keep his breathing steady, he made two more circuits of the descending ramp before it opened out onto a small, dark room, containing one guard, one stool, and one very solid-looking iron door covered with so many spikes that Will wondered if its creator was trying to compensate for something.

The guard beside the door did not so much sit upon his stool as sag around it. It appeared like some curious outgrowth of his posterior—like some foreign object left in a tree and slowly absorbed by the growing wood. His chain mail stretched over his gut, then finally gave up, leaving an exposed stretch of skin, which he scratched at idly. He was covered with a sheen of sweat. The few torches that guttered against the walls cast off more heat than the stone walls and low ceiling could shed.