I was sure he would.
It’s like it was crafted for me.
That gave me pause. Which of them was saying those words? Not the demon, I hoped. Was this not a monastery? A place dedicated to the God himself?
It sings to me.
That came out like a purr.
And it was on that tense note that I finally caught up to a laughing Brindle and then wound my way up the rocky cliffside path until I crested the last turn. Halberd strode out between the two broken halves of what had once been a charcoal grey arch carved with intricate weaving strands. It gaped like a mouth, cloven as if a great axe had been slammed into it right at the peak and then pulled out again, leaving a deep wedge of stone missing on one side and a torn upright on the other complete with grooves as deep as my fist.
Even if it had not felt like I was being swallowed by a beast, I would not have liked riding under such a cursed sign as a broken arch. With no other way in or out, I had no choice and I was forced to bend double over my horse and ride through. For a moment, I thought I smelled spices foreign to my senses, and I will not pretend that sat well with me. If there were ghost scents here, then what other scents might there be?
Brindle shot out before me with a concerning suddenness. My heart was in my throat as I called him back with a stern command.
“Brindle!”
An icy hand gripped me. What if he fell into a hole or over the side of an embankment? Or worse — what if the demon took him over here and I had to give chase, only to become lost in the ruins?
But it wasn’t the demon. Brindle pranced back to me, tongue lolling, doggy jubilance in every step. I drooped with relief and a flicker of a smile was already teasing around the corners of my lips before I realized we were not alone.
We’d burst into a courtyard grown over with sopping moss and twisted umber vines. A tall female statue remained intact to one side of it, posed for grace and beauty and carved of white granite. If she represented what other beauties and wealth could be found here, then it was considerable.
The courtyard was large enough for twenty knights on parade, but where once there might have been balustrades and terraces, now there were tumbled rocks and broken statuary and a lone door stood, closed and locked and still set in its doorposts even though it was surrounded by no walls at all.
I pulled Halberd up hard, breath sawing in my lungs.
Someone had lit a sulky fire opposite me. Crouched on either side of it were a pair of elderly paladins wearing amused expressions.
One paladin had silvery hair that met his pauldrons and the other wore tight pewter curls all over his head. They had the overly large noses and ears of old men, and sported hair growing out of both. Together, they seemed to be brewing a pot of tea.
But it was not these two barrel-shaped men who caught me off guard, frozen though they were in apparent amused horror at my arrival. It was the two hulking forms behind them that hooked the words of greeting in my throat before they could slip out.
Red-eyed and frozen in place — though frozen seemed the wrong word to use in a place where actual living ice had just receded; let us say preternaturally still — were a pair of hulking golems standing just behind the elderly paladins as if they were shadows cast tall and wide by the teasing flames of the tiny fire.
One of the paladins reached slowly up and, with a sound like the snicking of a well-oiled catch, the matching golem reached down, and placed a needle — no, wait, a long sword — into the hand of the paladin.
The foursome blinked at me.
I blinked back.
At my feet, Brindle yapped a single, excited bark, and then paced back and forth in front of Halberd, restrained from his clear joy only by my command.
“There’s only ever one in a murder,” the paladin at the fire said in the kind of voice that does not know how to be quiet. His confidence was only eclipsed by his sheer volume. “I did warn you of that.”
Sometimes there are two. Or even twenty, my demon reminded me in blood-soaked thoughts. Or even a thousand. At least when I’m doing the murdering.
He means “murder” in the way you refer to a group of crows, Sir Branson corrected him. A cruel nickname for Vagabond Paladins is “crow.”
Doesn’t seem very cruel to call someone a crow. Crows are smart. And they always eat.
“So you did, indeed,” the other paladin said cheerfully. “Brew the tea, would you? We’ll need one more cup. Did any of you bring extras?”
If Sir Branson still lived, he’d scold me for missing the others. I’d been so preoccupied that I hadn’t seen a single one of them.
You’d be dead by now if they were enemies and I wouldn’t need to scold you at all. Watch those Engineers. Something about them makes me feel itchy all over.
Was it that they were offering me tea? Yes, kindness truly was suspicious.
