‘Didn’t do nobody no harm.’
‘Didn’t you, though?’ Morning shrugs blithely, with a grin. ‘You didn’t think maybe a town might have needed that food more than you? Or needed our granaries and meat stores to last a few weeks at a time without being smashed? Didn’t think we’d starve?’
Gilde grunts. ‘All of us have had to grit out through lean winters, lady.’
‘Yes, you can certainly say that again.’ Morning clasps her hands together, addressing Gilde as if she’s just having a perfectly normal, relaxed chinwag. ‘And now the famously insular Bear Witch of the mountains is here, apparently to the rescue of the south-western territory and a human village; what an exciting about-face.’
‘You just set fire to my territory.’
‘Only a little bit. I’m sure you could have hunkered down, waited for it to burn itself out.’
‘Spitting fire down from the sky itself in that infernal flying contraption!’
‘Oh, do you not like my new tech? I suppose not; after all, it’s very modern. You wouldn’t be the type to appreciate that sort of thing, demographically speaking.’
The visible bit of Gilde narrows her eyes dangerously. ‘Oh, I can appreciate new-fangled doohickeys just fine, lady. Why, only last night I had some houseguests who left behind all sorts of interesting contraptions. I appreciated those a lot.’
In spite of the situation, Gretel raises her eyebrows at this.
‘So much so, in fact,’ continues Gilde, ‘that I was persuaded it’d be a crying shame to let ’em go to waste, instead of bringing them here to teach you a lesson in manners.’
‘Ooh, you’ve brought your own tech to the table.’ Morning beams. ‘What fun, I’d love to see.’
Gilde tosses Gretel her knapsack.
‘Girlie’s got some real nasty stuff in her bag, there. She’s got a stick that’ll zap you.’
Gretel pulls her modified electrical light stick out of the knapsack and does her best to hurriedly wind the dynamo while brandishing it at the nearest huntsman.
‘Axes for you, Majesty,’ adds Gilde, hurling Snow’s and the Dwarves’ blades in their general direction, somewhat unwisely. Several villagers have to duck out of the way of the more poorly aimed ones. ‘Not “new-fangled” as such, but they work. This, however…’ Gilde pulls out a small, sleek oblong of wood, covered in tiny hinges. Gretel sucks through her teeth quietly. The secret weapon. She’d hoped that Gilde wouldn’t find that. She knew that the Bear Witch was bound not to like it.
‘This,’ Gilde continues, holding the tiny contraption aloft, ‘I love. I’m keeping it.’
Morning cocks her head with a giggle, ignoring the fact that Gretel, Snow and several Dwarves are now properly armed. ‘You funny goose. What in Myrsina even is it?’
Gilde unhinges one of the secret weapon’s many blades. ‘It’s a doohickey. See? It has an adorable little saw.’
All the better to cut ropes and wooden bars with, thinks Gretel to herself.
‘And teeny scissors,’ Gilde adds.
All the better to snip off bits of magically draining nettle.
‘And a compass…’
Well, I just put that there out of common sense.
‘And the whole thing is so itty bitty…’
So I could hide it until the time was right.
‘So’s it can fit perfectly in my ikkle hands,’ concludes Gilde triumphantly. She attempts to demonstrate this, but sadly the effect is rather ruined by the fact that she’s trying to hold it in Snow’s oversized gauntlets. She gives up on this, and instead pulls out another sharp implement from the secret weapon, and waves it at Morning. ‘So, what’s it to be, lady? I saw your nasty ole flying machine crash, half your gang look like they’ve been thrown against the rocks, we got bears, we got wolves, we got dragons or whatever those guys are…’
‘Wyvern,’ Trevor tells her, crawling out from Baby’s fur. ‘Hi, guys!’
‘We got witches, and we got weapons,’ Gilde continues. ‘What do you say? Cut your losses?’
Morning casts a long, speculative gaze around the canyon. ‘Yeah,’ she says amiably, ‘OK then.’
‘What?’ asks the huntsman nearest to Hansel and Gretel. ‘You were going to go all in on these freaks; are you giving up just because one of them’s got a few bears and… what is that she’s waving at you? A corkscrew?’
‘Ooh, I like that you feel comfortable backchatting me like that,’ Morning tells the huntsman. ‘It really highlights how far we’ve already come in reforming our organisation, and believe me, your punishment will highlight how far we have yet to go, which is just as important.’
‘Thank you,’ replies the huntsman, before adding, ‘hang on, “punishment”?’
‘This was always going to be a case of trial and error,’ Morning tells the huntsmen. ‘We’ve gained a lot of really useful information today, about our enemy’s allegiances and shared territory, about their strengths…’ She beams at Gretel, still shielding her brother, her little electrical stick aloft. ‘And their weaknesses. We should put this down as a win, brethren, even if our only actual kills were the odd Dwarf, this time.’
‘What was that about the Dwarves?’ asks Trevor.
Morning either doesn’t hear him, or ignores him. She claps her hands at the huntsmen like a mum chivvying a muddle of children along. ‘Come on, this fight’s over. Find a buddy to help; looks like there’s a lot of broken legs about and our lift home was crashed, so it’s going to be quite a trek.’ The huntsmen do as she says. Morning turns and gives another little bow to Snow. ‘Wonderful training exercise, your Majesty, thank you so much, you’ve given me loads to work with.’
Snow hasn’t lowered her axe. ‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now.’
‘Well, for starters, the likelihood of one of my army stopping and killing you before you got that axe anywhere near me is very high,’ Morning tells her, ‘And on the off-chance that you did manage to kill me, not only would you make a martyr of me the way we made a martyr of Patience Fieldmouse… do stop trying to haunt me by the way, Patience, it’s not working…’
Patience stops hovering malignantly over Morning’s head and floats down to ground level sulkily.
‘But also,’ Morning continues, ‘I’d only be replaced by someone even more hard-line, just like the last head huntsman was replaced by me.’ She pulls a sympathetic expression. ‘Don’t be glum, you’ve got plenty of positives to take away from this, too. Look how unified you all are! It’s very sweet. You even managed to crash my flying machine. You are all worthy opponents, and as such you have my respect, and my word that someday, very soon, I will come back and kill you. All of you, including everybody who chose to identify themselves as a witch to me today, so you might want to get cracking with beefing up those village defences. It won’t help you at all, but it’ll make you feel as if it could.’
‘I can’t believe I ever trusted you,’ Hansel tells Morning weakly.