Gabe’s ghost had uttered those words to Clay on the night his old friend appeared on his doorstep, a prodding reminder of what they’d been. Of what they were daring to be again.
“Kings of the Wyld,” whispered Gabriel, and Clay saw the words catch fire in his eyes. “We were giants. We still are.” He exhaled a long, shuddering breath, and appeared to take in his surroundings for the first time: the wet earth, the fallen tree, the dripping eaves of the forest around them. When he spoke again there was a note of shame in his voice. “Thank you, Clay. Without you …”
“Don’t worry about it,” said Clay, and then shrugged, since it seemed the only appropriate thing to do.
What remained of their journey to Fivecourt passed almost without incident, at least until the clowns attacked.
Clay thought at first that they had come across a troupe of mummers rehearsing their act, but they were brandishing weapons and screaming bloody murder, which set off a few it’s an ambush alarms right there. The face of the first man to reach him was painted white, with red stars over each eye and a broad, bloody grin smeared from ear to ear. Clay introduced that face to Blackheart’s with a sickening crunch, and the man dropped like a corpse cut loose from a tree.
He cast around, trying to number their assailants. Three, four, five, he counted. Two swords, two clubs, one spear, and a bow. An arrow zipped past his legs, whining like an iron-nosed mosquito. Two bows, he silently corrected himself. Six clowns total. Or no, not clowns. Mercenaries. A band, maybe, or something like one.
He recalled Gabriel mentioning the rising trend of face paint among would-be warriors these days. It had sounded ridiculous at the time, and was no less so now that this bunch of idiots had come howling between the trees.
Gabriel, weaponless, dodged a club’s heavy swing and retreated toward Clay, while Moog sidestepped a sword’s thrust and ducked behind Matrick, whose attempt to reach his knives cross-handed was hampered by the bulge of his gut.
“To Hell with this, I’m the king of Agria!” Matty blurted, prompting Clay to wonder why they’d bothered to fake his death in the first place. “Surrender at once!”
The nearest merc sneered, revealing teeth the colour of rotted wood. “You don’t say? Well I’m Vail, the Son of Autumn!” he said mockingly, then pointed out a scrawny woman with stringy wet hair and even worse dental hygiene. “And that there’s my sister, the Spring Maiden. Say hi, Glif.”
The woman, who was most definitely not Glif (and probably no maiden, either), growled like an animal and launched herself at Matrick, chopping at his head with a rusted sword. The king got a knife up just in time to deflect the blow, but she lashed out with a foot, striking his knee, driving him to the ground with an unkingly yelp.
Clay missed what happened next, as two more attackers closed on him. The first, a spearman, came in point first. Clay twisted, grasping the haft of the weapon and pulling hard. The spearman tripped, pitching onto his face.
“Got ’em,” said Gabe, landing a boot on the back of the man’s skull.
The second man’s hair was spiked like a flail and dyed bright blue. He swung his sword at Clay’s legs, but the blade bit harmlessly into Blackheart’s mottled flesh. The swordsman tried something similar to what had worked on Matty, throwing a punch over the rim of Clay’s shield, but Clay was ready. He caught the man’s fist on the meat of his palm and clenched. The swordsman blew a breath through gritted teeth, trying in vain to pull his hand free. Clay met his rictus grin with one of his own, and wrenched.
His foe’s gasp became a squeal, then a curdling scream as the bones in his wrist gave way with a click. Clay released his shattered hand and the swordsman stumbled away.
“You f—” he started to say, until an arrow sprouted in the side of his head.
Somewhere deeper into the forest a bowman swore. Clay ignored him, since the shooter would need a moment to reload, and faced up to his next assailant. This one wielded a heavy club spiked with nails. His face was painted red, with a gold moon carving down the bridge of his broad nose. He was built like a Kaskar berserker, and hollered like one as he charged, broadcasting an overhead swing that Clay swiftly decided not to be on the receiving end of.
He rushed forward, bowling himself shoulder first into the big man’s legs. It was a desperate move, and it half-worked: the giant came down, but he came down directly on top of Clay, crushing the breath out of him and pinning him to the forest floor.
Clay had a brief moment in which to assess how the rest of the battle was going. The so-called Spring Maiden was down, crying, clutching her stomach with blood-soaked fingers. The one who’d mockingly named himself Vail was still on his feet but retreating frantically now that Matrick had found his rhythm. Roxy and Grace took turns darting at the man’s face, and finally one landed a kiss. The merc yelled in pain, raising both hands to protect himself, and Matty went in low, opening a slice behind the poor man’s knee that left him sprawled and screaming in pain.
Gabe took off at a sprint toward the other bowman. Moog was on his knees, rooting around in his bag for the gods-knew-what.
A wand that shoots fireballs would be nice, Clay thought. Or one of those chain-lightning bolts. Anything but another dose of Magic Moog’s Magnificent Phallic Phylactery …
Someone—the giant on his back, presumably—pushed Clay’s face into the damp earth. He got a mouthful of dirt, and when he tried instinctively to breathe he got a lungful of it. He struggled to roll away, but the big man had him trapped like a fox in a snare. Or, more aptly, like a fox flattened beneath a huge fucking rock. Stars swirled across the black of his vision, and Clay felt the muscles in his legs start to spasm as he slipped toward shock.
And then suddenly, light. Blessedly, air.
The pressure on his back eased enough for Clay to lever himself up and drag his body free. He coughed once, and then vomited a short stream of mud onto the patchwork leaves below him. Rolling over, he saw Matrick standing behind the big man, whose expression had gone slack in death. The king’s knives were buried to the hilt on either side of the giant’s neck.
Clay spat out a mouthful of leaf and mud. “Thanks.”
“That was … intense,” said Matrick. He was smiling, but his voice quavered, and his hands were visibly trembling. How long had it been, Clay wondered, since the king of Agria had killed a man with those hands?
Clay was about to voice his agreement when movement behind the king drew his eye.
The archer, he realized, angling for another shot.
“Matty, down!” he shouted, and the king dropped to his belly. Clay scrambled to his feet as the bowman drew, surged forward behind Blackheart as the arrow left the string in a blur. He felt the iron tip jolt his shield and was already reaching for it, yanking it out, spinning it round in his fingers. He found a grip, saw the bowman’s eyes widen as his arm whipped out and he hurled the arrow as hard as he could.
In almost every circumstance, Clay knew, throwing an arrow was an awful idea. He’d tried doing so only once before, years and years ago, but it hadn’t gone well—and so no one was more surprised than Clay when it sank halfway to the fletching in the archer’s throat.
Well, no one but the archer. The archer was almost certainly more surprised than Clay.
He tried giving voice to his disbelief, but blood flooded his mouth, and he slumped to the earth, dead.
Matrick whistled from where he lay from the ground. “Did you just—”
“Stop!” they heard Gabriel cry. He was still chasing the second bowman, who had circled back toward the site of the ambush. As the gap closed between them, the mercenary abandoned his bow and wheeled on Gabe, drawing a curved Phantran cutlass from a sash at his waist.