Chapter One
Vagabond Paladin
I fiercely opposed killing the dog. I was not entirely sure I could commit so black a deed, no matter how much it was warranted.
“Now you do what I say, unholy fiend,” I growled as I jammed his snapping jaws into the wet clay.
Brindle’s teeth had never seemed overly large when we played tug-of-war. Now, their dreadful size held an ominous threat.
The dog scrabbled hard against the ground, his claws tearing gouges into the hardpan just as they’d torn gouges through my flesh. Desperation shot hot through my limbs, granting me strength to hold him in place. It was a burning brew when it mixed with my hot tears.
“Hold, curse you. Just hold.” My voice was raw — of course. Screaming will do that.
I cinched the rusted chain tight around the dog’s neck. Already it was slick with spittle and blood. It painted my hands ruddy.
Here’s my advice: never fight a dog unless there’s no other choice.
Brindle’s huge body — easily as large around the rib cage as my own — thrummed under his short fur and his wild eye rolled up, searching, the whites gleaming. The moment his gaze met mine, he snapped again, and I had to lean even harder onto his round skull with my greave to hold him in place. This was a battle of will alone and I wasn’t sure which of us was winning. Or even if I wanted to win. I’d raised this dog from a pup. Every hurt to him hurt my heart.
He barked roughly, teeth snapping at air, and strings of drool flying outward like seeds of a blown dandelion. They clung to the pewter earth, adding to the churned slickness of the clay.
Let me be clear. Of all the places to fight three opponents, I’d chosen the worst. If you could call it a choice. I didn’t feel particularly like someone who had been offered options.
I was trembling straight through when he finally stilled and I could ease back. The chain was securely rigged through metal loops on the long pole. It had been a lantern pole affixed to my paladin superior’s saddle before I forced it to serve this way. Likely that was why his horse continued to throw dark looks my way from where he hid among the shadows of the surrounding trees — he saw me as a robber.
Yes, I know, Dandelion. I’m a traitor to us all. By all means, judge away.
Brindle swung to snap at me, stymied by the pole but undaunted. I jammed it hard against him, a reminder that just because he couldn’t reach me didn’t mean I couldn’t reach him. I knew the look of betrayal in his eye was my imagination. It didn’t make me hurt less.
I took each step backward with absolute caution until the length of the pole was between us. Former friend or no, he’d turned on me, too, and if I wasn’t going to kill him outright then I’d need to secure him.
My breath sawed through the sudden stillness of the evening, loud and uneven.
How long can you keep this up, Victoriana? You must dispatch the dog, or what will you do with poor Brindle when you finally stop to bury my remains?
Yeah, there was a voice in my head talking to me. And it knew my name. This was a new development and I was not grateful for it. It might be part of our creed to “accept with gratitude that which we do not understand” but I’d never really been very good at keeping the creeds. Or at accepting things I didn’t understand.
I was pretty sure it was some kind of shock or trauma or something that had me hearing my mentor’s voice in my head when he was very clearly dead.
Well, I’ll be the first to admit I’m not quite well, but I’m not sure I’d go so far as to say “dead.”
Swallowing down a wave of unease, I spared a miserable glance for the corpse whose voice echoed in my mind.
Sir Branson lay sprawled in the clay not far away, limbs akimbo, my longsword pinning him through the chest, and quite neatly to the ground. Which, I might add, had done little to stop him when he tried to tear out my throat before the demon leapt out of him and into his beloved dog, Brindle.
Remember when I said I was fighting three opponents? That’s them.
One mentor. One dog. One demon.
There were swirls of clay all over Sir Branson’s armor and thick tracks and whorls scored into it around him, as if a potter had been forming a pot and set him in the wall of it as a grisly stamp. I’d seen worse things pass for art in our time journeying through the great cities — Dancartia has a grotesque statue that looks like children formed it from blobs of mud — but I’d never seen anything that wrenched me in two like this did.
Beyond my mere sorrow, this was terribly unholy.
I made the sign of the Aspect of the Rejected God — a holy tap of knuckle to forehead and then sword arm.
God forfend my spirit be stained by communing with the dead.
God forfend the demon jump to me next.
