White flickered under the eaves of the trees. I cried out as a smaller direwolf charged Alastair from behind. Akarra roared and caught it headlong with a blast of dragonfire, but it was all the distraction the first direwolf needed. With a snarl it launched itself at Alastair’s exposed throat.
I never saw him bring his sword up. The blade never flashed. The direwolf scarcely made a sound. For one horrible second it was on top of him, then a deep and dreadful shudder ran through its entire body as it slumped sideways. Alastair rolled out from underneath and drew his sword from its belly. It tried to raise its head once, twice, then gave up with a snarl. Alastair limped around its other side, out of reach of its snapping fangs.
“You have no honor, direwolf, but I do.” He placed the point of his sword over the creature’s heart. “I keep my word,” he said, and thrust.
Chapter 11
The Right Noble House of Curdred
I wanted to run to him, to cheer, to shout his triumph to the skies. The blacksmith let out a rumbling laugh and hefted his hammer over one shoulder. “Miss Aliza, you’ve gone and married a right champion, you have. That’s as fine a piece o’ work with a sword as ever I seen.”
“Aye, very neat, but are we sure they’re all dead?” the hunter said. She’d not taken her arrow off the string.
The yes died on my tongue as a scream rang out from the Manor House. A human scream. Leyda and I exchanged a horrified glance before bolting for the house, the hunter and blacksmith hard on our heels.
We heard the sounds of the struggle before we rounded the hedge: grunts and hisses and the shrill, piping shriek of a Gnomic war cry. “Take that, you Thegegth filth!”
On the path to the kitchens, three gnomes and two hobgoblins wielding tiny spears faced off against a pair of hagsprites. A third hagsprite lay dead in the leaf litter, speared through the eye. One of the gnomes was bleeding heavily from a cut on his forehead.
“Watch out!”
There was a twang and a zip. The largest hagsprite fell just before it could spring, howling in pain and clutching the arrow in its back. Its companion hissed and spun toward the huntswoman following us, but the garden-folk were on it the instant it turned its back. We halted next to them as they finished it off. The bleeding gnome waved frantically toward the house.
“We couldn’t stop them all, Miss Aliza. Some of them got in!”
Another scream rang out as we ducked inside. Claw marks raked the wood of the kitchen door, and the lock had been chewed through from the outside. The kitchens were deserted.
“Find Mama and Papa,” I told Leyda. “Make sure they’re safe. Go with her, please,” I asked the huntswoman as she charged up the back stair. “Master Blacksmith, with me.”
We followed the sounds of raised voices down the corridor toward the front of the house. Claws had scored the floors here too, and every few feet there were drops of silver blood. A vase on the banister of the main staircase had been smashed against the baseboards. I sprang up the stairs two at a time, the blacksmith huffing along behind me.
“Miss!”
I nearly ran headfirst into one of the kitchen maids at the top. “Jenny! What are you doing? Get inside!”
“They went the other way, miss,” she said, and pointed back down the hall toward the family quarters. “They’re trying to get into the Carlyles’! I was—”
I was off at a dead run, no longer caring if the blacksmith followed. The corridors were dark, but I’d run these halls countless times before. I breathed a silent prayer of thanks to see my family’s door shut and no sounds of struggle within, but my stomach twisted as I rounded the corner. The Carlyles’ door hung open, tilted on its hinges, still swinging gently. There was the sound of grunting and scratching from inside.
I bit back a scream as something touched my arm. “Shhh. It’s me, Miss Aliza.” The hunter nodded to the door and edged forward, one hand at the nearly empty quiver on her hip. The sounds of scratching and grunting grew louder as we approached. She moved to one side and peered around the corner, then drew back quickly and fitted an arrow to the string. “They’re at the sitting room door.”
“How many?” I whispered.
“Three. Big ones.”
Blast. She had only two arrows left, and I no longer trusted my shaking hands to hit anything. The blacksmith puffed up. “Three? Right. One for each of us, eh?” he whispered. “One, two—”
Wood splintered. Madam Carlyle screamed.
“Now!” I cried, and leapt into the Carlyles’ front room. Splinters and bits of door littered the floor, which was slick with silver blood. The hagsprites had chewed and clawed a gap in the door just wide enough to slink through, and as we watched, the hindquarters of the last hagsprite wriggled into the room beyond. An arrow bit into the doorframe, just missing it. The huntswoman swore.
More screams. This time it was little Rya.
“Gwyn! Open the door!” I yelled.
The screams stopped.
“Open the door!”
There was a sharp cracking sound from inside. One of the hagsprites shrieked.
“And that”—a thump and another shriek—“will teach you”—crack—“to mind your own”—a howl and the sound of claws tearing at wood—“business!”
A bloody hagsprite pushed its way through the broken door, howling in pain as it hobbled along on three legs. The second followed, in worse shape than the first. There was no third.
They saw us at the same time, but it was too late to retreat. One hissed a challenge, its tongue licking toward the huntswoman like a whip. Her last arrow brought it down before it could lunge. The blacksmith finished the second. I leapt over the bodies before they’d stopped twitching and banged on the broken door. “Gwyn! Madam Carlyle! Are you all right?”
“We’re fine,” came Gwyn’s shaky answer, and the door swung open. She stood on the threshold, her son clutched tightly in her arms, eyes wide with a mixture of fear, astonishment, and to my surprise, delight. “Come in.”
Long claw marks scored the floor leading up to the table, where Madam Carlyle, Master Carlyle, and little Rya stood perched, their faces frozen in various degrees of shock. Rya was crying softly into her mother’s skirts. In front of them, impeccably cravated as ever, stood Wynce Curdred, wiping the silver blood from his ornate cane-sword. The third hagsprite lay at his feet. When he saw me, he dropped into an elegant bow.
“Lady Aliza! What an unexpected pleasure.”
I opened my mouth and found all words had fled.
Gwyn seized my hand. “The other Tekari—?”
“Dead, young mistress,” the blacksmith said through the crack in the door. “Won’t be troubling you again.”
“And the battle?” Madam Carlyle said from the table.
“Won.”
“Oh, thank Mikla,” she breathed, and hugged her daughter as Master Carlyle wrapped his arms around them both. “There, there, dear. It’s all right now.”
Still struggling to wrap my mind around the sight before me, I looked from Curdred to Gwyn and back again.
She smiled. “Aye, dearest. We have much to talk about.”
Word of the battle’s end spread quickly, helped along by the blacksmith, Henry, and any number of garden-folk too excited by the evening’s events to return to their Underburrow. I found myself running errands to every floor of the Manor, carrying bandages for Madam Moore, herbal unguents for Cook, and reassurance for everyone that the Tekari would not trouble them again tonight. To those who didn’t believe me, I simply pointed to the columns of smoke rising from the western field, where Akarra and Alastair were burning the bodies. “They won’t let anything else through,” I promised.