“Well, hello, Princess. Fancy meeting you here.” His sour breath washed over her face, his smile wide. “Thought you made a fool of me, did you? Well, when I bring your head to the king, I’ll make sure that it has a special place in the Black Towers, somewhere I can see it every day.” He yanked her up by her hair as Dinah flailed and struggled. His blade poked into her throat, a trickle of blood dampening her collar.
Dinah jabbed her elbow sharply into his stomach and he gasped. She tried to spin away from him, but he stepped on the edge of her cape and pulled her body close to his. His rough hands angled her chin to look at his face, his sword held firmly against her breast. “Take your last breath, my lady. I’ll never see a wench like you as my—”
There was a gurgling sound, and suddenly Yoous’s head was separated from his shoulders. Dinah looked up in shock and relief as she saw Wardley emerge through the red mist, his entire armor streaked with blood, a nasty open wound on his cheek. He clasped his arms around her waist. She slumped against him. Together they ran through the fighting hordes of rabid men.
“Wait! Morte!” she cried.
“We can’t help him! He’s gone!”
They ran into two Clubs, and Wardley dispatched one easily enough, while Dinah plunged her recovered sword through the remaining Card’s thigh. To her right, she saw a Diamond Card raise his hand to throw his dagger at Wardley, but in the second that he measured his aim, she buried her own dagger in his neck. His eyes went wide with surprise before he fell facedown into the ground.
With a cry, Dinah ripped the cape off from around her neck and leaped free of its weight, her sword out in front of her. She beckoned to the Cards who approached.
She fought in time with Wardley now, a mirror image of the dance they had perfected years ago. Only this time, it wasn’t a game. Fighting for their lives, they slashed through the men as they moved through the crowd toward Corning, who was whinnying for his master, two arrows poking out of his flank.
They had almost made it to him when Dinah heard a strange grinding sound, like chains being dragged over stony ground. The sound chugged slowly up the palace wall and echoed off the turrets, the high-pitched ringing deafening to all below.
“The Jabberwocky!” screamed Wardley. “Move!”
Together, they ran as quickly as they could. Dinah heard the whistling overhead and increased her speed, her lungs and side aching with each raw breath.
“Get down!” Wardley screamed at his men as he ran. “Get down, swords up!”
Wardley slammed to a stop and pulled Dinah beside him. She could see that they were safely out of range, but almost worse, they could now watch the Jabberwocky inflict its carnage.
The weapon came spinning out from behind one of the turrets, vaulted from a catapult inside the walls of the palace. Dinah watched as the whirling thirty-foot iron sphere was launched over the walls and spun faster and faster, gaining speed as it hurtled down on Cards and Yurkei alike. Wardley was screaming and Dinah joined him, their voices easily lost in the cacophony of battle. She watched in horror as it untangled, wider and wider, until its true form took shape: a large net made of crumpled metal, covered with curled iron spikes. It soared high into the air before it began its plummet toward the ground, its gigantic width encompassing a quarter of the battlefield. Men ran, screaming, but it was too late. The Jabberwocky careened down from the sky like a metal blanket.
Oh gods.
“Get down! Swords up!” Dinah’s eyes found Sir Gorrann, just as he finished off a decorated Heart Card. “Get down!” she screamed, waving her arms frantically. He looked up just in time to see an agonizing death hurtling toward him. The Spade curled himself into a small ball and pointed his sword at the sky. Starey Belft was running toward a large group of Spades, screaming and waving to warn them. But he was too late.
The Jabberwocky landed with an earth-shattering crack, its metal netting covering hundreds of bodies. Its curved hooks pinned its victims to the ground like insects on a board.
Screams of agony rang out over the plains as the king’s weapon took limbs, eyes, shoulders, mouths. Silence fell over the battlefield as everyone stared at the spot where the men had been, now just a quivering mass of metal. Seconds passed and Dinah didn’t breathe, not until several swords popped up from below, sawing through the metal. The few men who had knelt with their swords or shields protecting them from the Jabberwocky’s terrible claws emerged. Through the holes they had made, Dinah saw glimpses of terrible suffering—men impaled, their lifeless eyes staring up in shock. A pool of blood crept out from under the net now, and Dinah looked away, but not before she saw Sir Gorrann shake himself off and head back into the fray. Her heart resumed beating. Starey Belft, commander of the Spades, did not emerge. He was gone.
The cranking sound filled the air again, but more dimly this time.
“They’re sending one out on the other side!” Wardley yelled, plunging his sword into the heart of a suffering Yurkei, a mercy killing. Dinah’s face was wet with tears. Her army was decimated. At least half of them were dead or dying, though the king’s army was worse off. Loud screams echoed from the other side of the palace as the second Jabberwocky ended thousands of lives in its metal tangle of death.
Her misguided attention was noticed, and two Heart Cards abruptly grabbed her arms, dragging her backward. Dinah spun out of their grasp. Wardley tackled the other man, pressing him to the ground and throttling him. The Card quickly lost consciousness. Dinah sparred with the man she’d disarmed, her blade moving faster and faster with each stroke. Finally, the man raised his arm a little too high. She plunged her sword into his stomach, through his thin leather armor.
Before she could even pull her sword free, another Diamond Card grabbed at her, latching onto her breastplate, and hurled her to the ground. Dinah pushed herself backward while the Diamond advanced on her, an amethyst-encrusted dagger in his hand. The Card raised his arm, his eyes trained on Dinah’s face.
Without so much as a whisper, Ki-ershan leaped on the man’s back, his white-striped hands wrapped around the Card’s neck. He gave a jerk and the man’s head twisted abruptly with a sickening crack. He fell lifelessly to the ground. Ki-ershan yanked Dinah to her feet and threw her on Corning, who had found his way to Wardley. Wardley climbed up in front of her, a new wound open on his leg.
From her position astride Corning, Dinah looked with horror at what her quest for a crown had brought. All around her were blood and bone and bodies, some piled waist high. Screams of pain and the stench of smoke mingled in the air.
Hell had come to Wonderland.
She had come to Wonderland.