Nettle & Bone(78)
For the length of a half dozen heartbeats, the room was absolutely still. Then everyone seemed to breathe in at once. Vorling shouted, “Stop her!” and the courtiers leapt forward or stepped back, depending on their nature, and the guards rushed Agnes, drawing their swords, and Agnes hiked up her skirts and ran for the door, no longer a towering figure of darkness but a little round woman with a flushed face and a half-grown chicken tucked into her scarf.
“Stop her!” shouted Vorling again. “This is an attack! Cut her down! Bring me her head! Find the real godmother!”
The two guards flanking the doorway stepped forward, halberds at the ready. Marra stuffed the side of her hand in her mouth. Agnes was going to get cut down and there was no way to save her. Pretending to be a nun wouldn’t work—couldn’t work—
A ghostly growl filled the hallway. Bonedog took the guard on the left from behind, his teeth sinking into the silks of the dress uniform and tearing out a great gash of thigh. The man screamed, his leg buckling, and he went down.
Bonedog snapped and snarled soundlessly at the second guard and Agnes got past him into the hallway. “Go, go!” yelled Vorling to the men surrounding him, “Go! Kill her familiar and bring me her head!”
They charged across the room. Vorling stood alone and then there were four of them going after Bonedog and he couldn’t get all of them. Oh, Bonedog, no, no, run—Fenris, where are you? You have to save him, Fenris!
Fleeing had never been in Bonedog’s nature. Marra dragged in one long breath and held it, and Bonedog’s jaws closed on a man’s knee. Then the halberd came down and the ghost of a yelp filled the room.
Bones exploded in every direction, no longer held together by wire. The tiny joints of paw and tail rattled across the floor like unstrung beads. Marra moaned and the only mercy was that the courtiers were gasping and shrieking in surprise so that no one noticed except her sister.
“Foul magic!” cried one of the courtiers, a big man with a fox-colored beard. “Sorcery!”
“Stop h—” Vorling shouted again, and then the last word went soft and wet and startled. Marra wrenched her eyes away from Bonedog, back to Vorling.
Fenris had his hand on the king’s shoulder, almost a friendly gesture, except for the foot of steel protruding from Vorling’s chest. Vorling stared down at the blade, his expression just as puzzled as before, and then Fenris pulled the sword out and blood came from the king’s mouth and he died.
“He did it,” said Marra in a very small voice. “He did it.” He must have been working his way along the wall while everyone was staring at Agnes and Bonedog. That was the right thing to do. That was why we came. Wasn’t it?
She would have traded victory in a heartbeat to have Bonedog whole again.
Kania turned her head. Her eyes swept over her dead husband and then to her living sister, and Marra could see everything snapping into place. But then, unlike Marra, Kania had never been a fool.
The guards who were trying to chase Agnes skidded to a halt. They ran back toward Fenris. There were five of them, four with swords, one with a halberd. Fenris had no armor and only the old iron sword stained with the king’s blood.
He looked across the room and his eyes met hers. It was the same look he always had, the one that said, Can you believe two sensible people like us are caught up in this? And then he turned to meet the guards and Marra saw on his face the moment that he decided to die.
They circled him. He raised his sword. She was trapped in one of those nightmares where no matter how fast she ran or how loudly she yelled, she would be too slow, the air was like glue, and so she stood with her throat closed and her feet nailed to the floor, unable to look away.
Swords rose. They had only to attack him, all together, and it would be over. He could not defend from all directions, and all of them were young.
Into that terrible moment of waiting, the queen of the Northern Kingdom shouted, “Hold!”
* * *
The guards obeyed. It seemed impossible, but they all took a step back, widening the circle around Fenris. Their eyes flicked to Kania and then back to Fenris.
Kania spoke as clear and crackling cold as ice. “This man was sent by our enemies to kill our king. I want to know everything he knows before he dies.” She walked forward and somehow the guards were listening and the courtiers were watching her as if she was truly the queen and not merely the king’s beaten wife. She stood over the cradle. “My son has been cursed,” she said, still in that cold, clear voice. “My husband is dead. I will know who did this. You will take him alive.”
Another long, terrible waiting moment, but somehow the balance had shifted. The pivot point was no longer the blades of the guards but the queen standing over the cradle. The man with the fox-colored beard moved forward to stand a little behind her, as if lending her his presence, and all the courtiers saw it and Marra saw it register on many faces, although she did not know what it meant.
Please, thought Marra. Please, Fenris, please. She begged him with her eyes to surrender. If he lived, she could get him out of this. Probably. Or at least the dust-wife could, or Agnes, or someone.
Fenris laid down his sword.
The guards rushed him and they were not gentle. He went to his knees and they dragged his arms behind him. “Put him in a cell,” said Kania. “He will be alive when I see him again, or all of your lives will be forfeit. Do I make myself clear?”