Barnaby the Wanderer

Chapter 13: They Smell the Blood

Matilda stood on watch, her back to the remains of the farmhouse chimney. The campfire had settled to orange embers. No moon shone to add light, nor distract with mad shadows. Keeping to silence, leaning against stones, the Silenian tipped head, listening. Hearing wind in tree branches, the distant flow of water. Choirs of crickets and frogs making their night-song, owls, moths and bats debating ownership of the night air. From the south came a distant crackle of crushed leaves.

Matilda waited, motionless, till it came again. She notched arrow to her bow. Tiptoeing best one can with hooves, crouching low, finding Val wrapped in blanket.

"Pssst," she whispered. "Wake up."

"The cup?" asked Val.

"What?"

Val shook herself awake, pushing off the blanket.

"Never mind. What is it?"

"Folk gathering in the trees. I think. Coming from the road south."

Val drew her knife. "I'll wake the others. You keep watch from someplace where they can't come behind you."

Matilda nodded, edging away. Val shoved her feet into boots, crept to the blanket where Cedric lay huddled. She knelt, shook him by the shoulder. Finger pressing to her lips in sign for quiet. He blinked himself awake, nodded.

Val did the same with Jewel, who lay conveniently close to Cedric. The bard wondered if and when those two would begin sharing a blanket. Who'd make the first move? Seemed more likely to be Cedric. He was older, more confident. Well, but Jewel was more direct. Or was that pose? Infernum, who knew. They were both unfathomable as the nether pits of Nix.

Before she had time to wake Barnaby, something flew hissing over her head. An arrow, slaying a pine tree. If she'd not been moving in fast crouch, it would have slain a bard.

"Wake!" she shouted to all, and rolled from firelight into shadows. Finding herself on her back, staring up at a stranger holding an axe. Nothing so fearsome as Barnaby's butcher blade. This was just something for chopping wood, the heads of chickens. Still, it looked lethal as he raised it. She waited for the downward strike, preparing to roll. But the man decided to drop the axe, then drop himself, Revealing Bodkin behind him, holding his short sword, darkened with blood.

Val rolled to her feet. The camp now filled with shouts. A man in white robe strode into the firelight, swords in both hands.

"Suffer and die, defilers of spirit!" he shouted, and leaped into the campfire. At once his robe burst into flames. He screamed, but continued standing, waving swords, burning like an avenging paper angel.

"Die!" he repeated.

Val turned from him to spy a woman holding a kitchen knife, rushing through the trees. Val waited, and as the woman neared she sidestepped, reached, slicing the attacker's throat neat as scissor to thread. The woman continued onwards, colliding into a tree; falling to the ground. There she knelt slashing at the trunk, determined to take the tree with her to Elysium.

More madmen emerged from night shadows; while the fellow in the flames screamed in an ecstasy of pain and devotion. One and then another fell with arrows calmly placed by Matilda.

Val watched Barnaby leap into the firelight, swinging his axe, striking the chest of a man holding a pitchfork. The man screamed, fell, began crawling towards shadows. Barnaby raised the axe to finish the man; then turned away, letting him retreat.

Bodkin waved his magic blade at two attackers, backing away till one fell writhing in Jewel's purple flames. The other collapsed with a blow to the head from Cedric's broom-stick staff.