The paladins’ confidence vanished as pandemonium broke out.
Nimue lunged from her hiding spot in the brush, but Gawain pulled her back.
“Hold. Let the Tusks do their work,” he whispered.
Nimue felt hot and feverish, and her teeth were on edge. “I can’t.” She shoved away from Gawain and charged into the moonlight wearing a chain-mail shirt, two sizes too large for her and belted into a form of skirt; breeches and high boots for the glade; and the Devil’s Tooth slung around her back. A Red Paladin happened to be running directly at her, and she drew the sword and severed his head in a single stroke. She felt like her cage door had risen and she was wild and free. Her fears and anxieties were forgotten. Her hurt over Arthur’s departure fled. Instead she reveled in the cries and the desperate, conflicting orders of the Red Paladins.
“Troch no’ghol!” Wroth of the Tusks rebuked Nimue as he rode the gargantuan boar and directed the charge to inflict maximum violence upon the paladins. For centuries, the Tusks had trained their war boars for combat with fighters on horseback. The boar kept its nose low, its tusks at ground level, as paladin swords slapped at its thick bristled mane and leather-tough hide to no effect. Then the boar jerked its wagon-size head left and right, sweeping out the horses’ legs and flinging paladins into the darkness.
The Tusk fighters had been thrown out of their battle formation by Nimue’s arrival, giving the Red Paladins a chance to regroup.
The plan faltering, the Green Knight whistled and hatches opened in the ground. Arrows whisking past their cheeks, Tusks and Fauns hurried the Marsh Folk into the underground Plog tunnels, the shy, strange Plogs tilting their heads inquisitively at the frightened Marsh children as they crawled into the freshly dug corridors, led by Fauns with torches.
“Nimue, stay with us!” Gawain shouted after her as she ran deeper into the marsh, where the Red Paladins were forming a line. A few broke off to engage her. One of them raised his sword high and she swept him low, cleaving his leg off above the knee. An arrow clipped her shoulder. Another buzzed past like a dragonfly. She heard Gawain in the distance, the worry in his voice. But Nimue was not afraid. Her vision was clear. She was a step faster, like she could feel the paladins’ movements before they made them. The Hidden enhanced her senses. It was the sword. The sword was the beacon.
Another Red Paladin drove at Nimue with an ax. She parried the blow aimed at her ribs and swiftly countered to his neck. Blood sprayed and blinded the paladin charging up behind her victim, giving Nimue a clean blow to his head.
Paladin, paladin, choke and twitch, bitten by the Wolf-Blood Witch.
Nimue smiled. She liked the rhyme.
A flash of movement allowed her to pivot away from instant death, but a dagger still sank deep into her left shoulder.
Idiot fool! Nimue cursed her carelessness as agony forked through her head and chest and the Red Paladin’s full weight against her toppled them both into a thicket, Nimue on the bottom. She got her forearm up in time to block the paladin’s next desperate blow. The paladin’s dagger point hovered inches from her eyes. His other hand clawed for her throat and his eyes bulged, ready for death. The Devil’s Tooth was useless, pinned beneath her. She scratched at his face, but he bit her hands instead. She tried to knee his groin, but he sat above her waist. His fingers found her throat and squeezed, cutting off her air.
A wet thunk sprayed Nimue’s face with blood. An arrow stuck through the paladin’s temples. Nimue could suddenly breathe again. She fought off the stars bursting in her eyes, climbed to her feet, and retrieved the Devil’s Tooth, roaring at the same time. She turned and saw the Green Knight several yards away, readying another arrow. His face was all fear and fury.
A bold paladin ran past Nimue and speared the giant boar in the side. The beast squealed. Nimue stepped forward, spun the heavy sword in a high arcing circle, ignoring the fire in her shoulder, and—chuk—sent the paladin’s head soaring through the air, past Wroth atop his boar mount.
Wroth watched the head fly past and splash into the mud, then slowly roll to a stop. He turned back to Nimue with a wide, big-toothed smile.
“The Wolf-Blood Witch!” Wroth bellowed into the night.
Nimue was dizzy, almost giddy, and somewhere, deep down, scared to death.
Wroth and his fighters threw their fists in the air and chanted her name. Her heart pounded and she smiled, despite the lightning in her shoulder. Gawain was checking on her, saying words to her, but there was so much blood rushing in her ears she couldn’t hear the words.
She turned and crawled into a mud tunnel. Gawain followed her. Plogs hurried to work behind them, shoveling mud between their legs with their deformed, clawed fingers, filling in the tunnel door and sealing it up to appear as though it had never existed.
TWENTY-NINE
KING UTHER MARCHED DOWN A filthy dungeon corridor, flanked by ten armored guards, until he reached the last cell of the block. Inside, Merlin was chained to the wall, hair and beard disheveled and caked with mud and blood. The soldiers had not been gentle with him.
Uther straightened to his full height. “Merlin.”
“Your Majesty,” Merlin rumbled, his eyes hidden by greasy locks of hair. “I would stand, but I am leashed to the wall.”
Uther’s nose twitched at the rank odor of mold and human waste. He posed a simple question. “Why didn’t you tell us about the Sword of Power?”
“Well, Your Majesty—” Merlin started.
But Uther interrupted, “Wait, I know. You wanted to acquire it for us first before animating any false hopes.”
Merlin’s hands gestured in their iron cuffs. “Frankly, yes, Your Majesty.”
Uther smiled coldly. “Always the perfect answer.”
“I confess the way I left was less than ideal, sire, but you see, the omens—”
Again Uther interrupted. “The omens, yes. Blood raining down on Castle Pendragon. Scary stuff.”
“But as I’ve always said, sire, there are—”
The king cut Merlin off again. “Different possible meanings to signs. Yes, we remember. We are not as stupid as you think.”
At this Merlin hesitated. There was no question that their dynamic had changed. He trod carefully. “I never suggested—”
But Uther seemed determined not to let Merlin finish a sentence. “We remember all your lessons, Merlin. For instance: we need not fear omens, but rather we can seize them. Turn them around and examine them until they tell us something new. And then through action make the signs come true.” Uther wrapped his hands around the bars of Merlin’s cell. “And this thinking was very instructive.”
“How so, Your Majesty?”
“Because we decided the blood that fell on the castle was not ours”—all pretense of kindness left Uther’s eyes—“but yours.”
Merlin peered at the king through his dirty locks, his voice a warning. “Uther—”
“You never believed in us. And now we no longer believe in you.” Uther stepped away from the cell and folded his hands behind his back. “The Age of Wizards is at an end. We consider your recent derelictions as treason. And for that there is only one recourse: execution.”