The brute paused. It craned its broken neck down to look at the remains of my useless trap. At that moment, Virgule’s ogre, still barreling along behind the first, plowed straight into it from behind. The second ogre’s momentum was enough to drive the first headlong into the stone wall of the guardhouse. The masonry was sturdy but no match for a battering ram made of ogres.
Virgule, who had been following close behind, came to a skidding halt as the guardhouse crumpled. Massive stones the size of writing desks collapsed inward, hammering the ogre with one blow after another until the colossus was buried from the shoulders up. The smaller of the two, the point of Virgule’s sword still poking out of its back, was half-buried for a moment as well, but as bad luck would have it, its head remained fully intact. It shrugged off a few cracked roofing tiles and pulled itself free.
“I’ll call that a qualified success,” I breathed.
“Watch out!” Virgule cried, and in another moment we both were off again, racing back along the wall.
Ahead of us, Pavel had resumed his assault on Jackaby, who remained on the ground, clutching the jostling satchel. With one hand, Jackaby was frantically searching his pockets, pitching whatever defenses he could find at the glassy-eyed attacker.
Jackaby swiveled his head in time to see us racing past him. “Here!” He had pulled something from his coat—it looked like a little medicine tablet—and he threw it haphazardly at the ogre’s face. It caught the brute in the mouth and at once the ogre’s jawline popped and shifted. Its teeth grew four sizes. They had been large to begin with, but at least they had been proportionately large. Now they jutted past its gray lips like enormous razor-sharp tusks. I ducked away as the ogre came at me with its new, horrifying jaws.
With one meaty hand, the undead thug grabbed me by the waist, pinning my right arm to my side. Its skin was cool and moist, like rising dough, and it smelled of wet rats and carrion birds. I struggled with my free hand and managed to pull the useless sharpened stake out of my pocket. I might not be able to take the thing’s head off, but I would die fighting. I waited for the colossal corpse to raise its fist, but instead it did something far worse—it opened its mouth. Rancid breath washed over me, like rotten onions and spoiled death.
I did the only thing I could think to do before the brute could take a bite of me. I stuck my hand right in between those terrible teeth and stuffed the wooden stake into the creature’s maw, wedging it between the roof of its mouth and its lower jaw. The thing halted, shaking its head. I could see the muscles of its jaw working. Pain did not appear to be an obstacle. With a final grunt of effort, it closed its great ugly mouth with a loud clack of gnashing teeth and a muffled crunch of something else inside its skull. The ogre’s eyes widened. Its muscles went limp.
As the corpse swayed, I slipped through its grip. It managed to stagger a step or two backward before it stumbled over the edge and plummeted half a dozen stories to the ground below. The wall shook as the ogre landed. I breathed. That was both of them—we had done it!
Serif groaned, and Virgule hastened to her side.
“Don’t trouble yourself on my account!” grunted Jackaby. I spun around. Pavel had him pinned to the ground. Jackaby was still clutching the satchel with one hand while the other held Pavel at arm’s length. It was not really Pavel—it was a clumsy marionette of the treacherous vampire, but it was vicious all the same. The satchel flopped and bucked under Jackaby’s grasp. The vampire clawed mercilessly at his arms and chest, and the detective’s coat was in tatters.
Virgule was attending to Serif. Beside them lay her sword. I picked it up. It was heavier than it looked, but nothing compared to the poleax. The weight balanced comfortably in my hand. While Pavel tore at my employer, I raised the blade over my head. I swung my arms and felt the sword squish and click against bone. Cutting a person’s head off is not like carving a slice of ham. There are tendons and vertebrae and . . . and . . . feelings. Feelings are awful. I was not the sort of lady who had been brought up to hack into the undead with a longsword.
Pavel’s head turned ever so slightly, and I caught the faintest hint of that insufferable smirk he had been so good at before his un-re-dead-birth. His hollow eyes on me, Pavel caught Jackaby’s wrist in one hand. Jackaby struggled, and I could tell the corpse had a grip like steel. He was now pinned. Jackaby had to either release his hold on the imp or leave himself defenseless against the vampire.
I hacked into Pavel with the longsword again. And a third time. And a fourth. I could feel his spine chipping with each blow. His head tilted rakishly forward. And then he caught the blade with one hand on the fifth. We all froze there for a moment, Pavel’s left hand wrapped around the sword. It began to drip something thick and syrupy. His right hand was still locked on Jackaby’s arm, and his head was lolling forward.
“Catch,” Jackaby said, and opened the bag.
The imp catapulted out of the bag, and the effect was something like firing an angry red cannonball directly at Pavel’s face. There was a crack.
We never did find the head.
The imp, having skidded and rolled to an ungainly landing halfway across the rooftop, went scampering away across the tiles.
“Should we stop him?” Virgule asked.
“Don’t bother,” Serif grunted. “He won’t raise any alarms that throwing an ogre over the wall didn’t already raise.”
“You need to stay still,” Jackaby cautioned as Serif attempted to push herself upright.
“I need to do precisely the opposite,” snarled Serif. “Salamander gauze, Captain.”
Virgule nodded. He produced a slim medical pouch from within his robes and took from it a roll of red-brown bandages. Serif gingerly slid the cloak from her shoulders. Her tunic beneath was saturated with blood.
Virgule bit his lip. “This is going to—”
“Do it now.”
The captain swallowed and wrapped Serif’s shoulder with the cloth. As he tied off the end, the fabric began to glow like a hot ember. The noise that Serif made was not a scream in the traditional sense, but something more animal, a roar of concentrated pain and fury. When the magic had run its course, Serif gasped and pitched forward, resting her head on the stones while she caught her breath, steam billowing from the bandages.
“Get her back to your castle,” Jackaby said. “Tell Arawn to march on Hafgan’s Hold immediately.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Serif panted.
“The detective is right.” Virgule swallowed. “We need reinforcements.”
“Of course we do,” Serif said. “Go, Captain, and tell Lord Arawn we need the elves and the dwarves and anyone else who will answer the call. They might not march for the Fair King, but they will march for the good of the Annwyn.”
“You’re staying here?”