Fable: Blood of Heroes (4 page)

The outlaws had cut the redcaps’ throats. Rook pinched the dirt between his fingers. The dark clumps crumbled under pressure. “There’s not enough blood.”

“How much do you need?” Tipple asked.

“No, he’s right,” said Leech. “Three bodies that size, we ought to be standing in enough blood to fill a bucket or two.”

Rook turned back to the redcap, his crossbow pointed not so subtly at the creature’s leg. “What did they want from you?”

“Give him a drink,” suggested Tipple. “Strong ale loosens tongues and morals both. And occasionally bladders.”

“Right, because what we need now is a
drunk
redcap,” said Inga.

Rook was tempted to just shoot the redcap and head out to track the rest of the outlaws, but experience and instinct both told him there was more going on here. The outlaws had slain redcaps, but this particular redcap hadn’t been a prisoner. Had he tricked the outlaws into trusting him, only to betray them?

“Blue, do you know why those humans wanted redcaps?” asked Inga.

Blue shook his head.

People said redcaps were cursed, transformed by changeling magic. In that instant, Rook could believe it. Blue looked almost human, confused and exhausted. And then his expression turned crafty, and any trace of humanity vanished. “Heroes helped Blue. Blue will help you.”

“What kind of help?” Rook asked warily.

Blue grinned, showing off crooked, green-stained teeth. “Help kill outlaws. Kill Nimble John. Kill
everybody
!”

Tipple nudged the burning outlaw with his toe. “I take it this ain’t Nimble John, then.”

“Nimble John? Ha!” Blue spat on the body. “That’s Ugly, Stupid Weaselface.”

“Who’s this one?” asked Tipple.

Blue glanced over. “Ugly, Stupid Dogarse.”

With an exasperated sigh, Rook grabbed a coil of rope from beside the cage. The instant he turned towards Blue, the redcap shrieked in dismay and tried to flee, but in his panic, he ran face-first into Inga’s shield. He bounced off and fell to the floor like he’d collided with a mountain.

While Blue groaned and clutched his bleeding nose, Rook tied a quick noose and looped it over the redcap’s head. He pulled it snug, then coiled the rest of the rope over his shoulder.

“How’s a twisted-up wreck like you going to help us?” asked Tipple.

Blue climbed to his feet. His eyes went round as plates. “Magic.”

“
You
can do magic?” Tipple folded his arms.

“Very strong Will,” Blue snapped. In his enthusiasm for killing, he seemed to have forgotten to rhyme. Rook hoped that lapse continued.

Tipple sniffed. “Very strong stench is more like it.”

“Watch, watch.” Blue tugged what looked like an old finger bone from beneath the rags of his shirt.

Rook tensed, and even Inga readied her weapon, but the redcap didn’t act like he was trying to fight or escape. He seemed excited, bouncing in place and muttering as he gripped the old finger in both hands.

Blue closed his eyes. His forehead wrinkled like a prune. A rotted prune, one that had sat in the mud for three days in the hot sun. Veins bulged beneath his skin, and his muscles trembled.

“Will, Will, can’t sit still.” Blue rocked faster and faster, his body taut with concentration. Rook rested his finger on the trigger of his weapon. This crossbow was as much a wife to him as any woman could be, and he knew precisely how far he could squeeze her trigger before she spat death from her maw. He brought the trigger to that razor-thin edge, until the slightest twitch would send a series of bolts into Blue’s throat. Any hint of attack, and Blue would be dead before he could blink.

Leech, Inga, and Tipple leaned closer. Blue raised the bony finger towards the ceiling. “Here it comes, ugly humans!”

At the end of Blue’s pronouncement, a thunderous fart echoed through the tunnel. Blue toppled forwards, as if the force of the expulsion had flung him to the ground. The others staggered back.

Rook kept Blue in his sights, which was difficult, given how badly his eyes were watering. By the old king’s ghost, he could
taste
the foulness in the air. “
That
was your ‘magic’?”

Blue’s eyes were wide, like he was just as surprised as anyone. He sniffed the air. “Nope.” He glared at the dead finger, then shoved it back into his shirt. “
That
was bad seagull.”

“It smells like a corpse crawled out of his arse,” Tipple wheezed.

Blue twisted about, snatching at the seat of his trousers as if to reassure himself that they remained corpse-free.

“We should—” Inga coughed and rubbed her face. “The quicker we escape these tunnels, the sooner we can bring the rest of these outlaws to justice.”

“Yes!” Blue whirled and grabbed the rope trailing from his noose. He tugged hard, trying to drag Rook along. His apparent terror from before had vanished like it never existed. “Kill the outlaws. Blue knows where.”

“You’ll take us there?” Leech asked.

Rook scowled, but for the life of him, he couldn’t tell whether or not Leech had made the rhyme intentionally.

Blue nodded so hard, his cap would have flopped off if not for the nails holding it in place. “This way, Heroes.”

Rook doubted anyone else saw the way the redcap’s eyes narrowed, or the crafty smile that peeled his lips back. The expression vanished an instant later, washed away by madness and mania.

Rook tightened his grip on the rope and followed.

CHAPTER 3

LEECH

T
hey left the outlaws’ lair far too soon for Leech’s liking. Surely the fall of Brightlodge would wait while he completed a quick dissection or two, or at least long enough for him to cut out a few organs for later study.

He’d barely had time to collect one of the nails from a redcap skull. It looked similar to the ones protruding from Blue’s cap: about the length of Leech’s index finger, iron with a square head.

When they emerged into the sunlight, Blue stopped abruptly to gather the discarded seagull bones he had left at the entrance. Curious, Leech reached out and tugged the nail jutting from the back of his skull.

Blue screeched and flung the bones at Leech’s face.

“Sorry,” said Leech. “Did that hurt?”

Rook gave the rope a warning pull. Blue tugged at his noose with one finger and scowled at Leech.

“How’d you get the nails in?” Leech continued. “Did you hammer them yourself, or did another redcap do it? Did they drill guide holes to keep the skull from cracking?”

Leech had examined redcaps before, and there was no logic or consistency to how they secured their headgear. One redcap might have a single oversized nail straight through the centre of the skull, while a more recent specimen he’d dissected had a head like a metal porcupine. In life, the weight of those nails had dragged that redcap’s head down, giving him a tendency to run in erratic circles.

“Aw, don’t tell me you’ve never wondered,” Leech said. “Like the wise man said, ‘Knowledge is half the battle.’ ”

“The way I learned it,” said Tipple, “this here is half the battle.” He tightened his right hand into a fist.

“Yes, but the other half—” Leech began.

“Is over here.” Tipple clenched his left hand and grinned.

Leech sighed. “I met a man who took an arrow through the head and lived. Scrambled his brain like an egg. He started repeating whatever folks said, cursing up a storm. Forgot half his life, including his own wife, though I think he might’ve been faking that last bit.” He pointed to Blue. “Makes you wonder how much of what makes a redcap comes from those nails, hey?”

None of which explained why someone would bother to drain the redcaps of their blood. Or where the rest of the blood had gone. “They must’ve killed ’em somewhere else.”

“Who?” asked Inga.

“The redcaps. It’d explain the lack of blood. But why bother dragging the bodies back through the tunnels?”

“To keep them from being discovered,” suggested Rook.

“Maybe.” Leech rubbed his arms, absently trying to restore warmth to the flesh as he walked. It was always like this after he manipulated the lives of others. His power was unlike those of other Heroes. They attacked the body from the outside. Leech reached past the flesh and pulled the very life from its core.

Taking an outlaw’s essence and using it to heal Rook had been simple enough. Leech was simply the river through which that energy flowed. What worried him was the fact that, over time, every riverbed began to erode.

It was a shame the dead king had run off before the fight. It would be interesting to see how Leech’s ability interacted with a ghost.

A shout yanked his attention back to his surroundings. They had reached the bridge to Hightown. Men and women shied back from the redcap, pointing and crying out.

Blue loved the attention. He grew wilder, leering and laughing and flinging his remaining seagull bones in every direction, until he looked to be in danger of toppling over the side of the bridge and plummeting into the water below.

A young girl threw a rock, striking Blue in the forehead. He shook like a wet dog, then laughed and charged. He had gone only three steps when the noose went taut around his neck. He toppled over backwards, and there was a sharp clink as the nails in his head struck the steps. He rolled about, clawing at his throat for air.

“There’s nothing to fear,” Inga called, her words booming out over the crowd. “Blue is trussed up good and tight. He’s no danger to any of you.”

“Sure he is,” said Leech. “The fact that he’s tied up doesn’t change that. It just prevents him from killing anyone until he can escape, that’s all.”

Inga glared at him.

“Sorry.” That seemed to satisfy her. “If you think about it, people are just as dangerous. They say redcaps started out human. We’ve all got the potential for their savagery. Makes you wonder whether redcaps retain the potential for humanity.”

Leech turned to look at Blue, who had climbed onto the side of the bridge and was getting ready to piss over the edge. Rook yanked him down, fortunately for everyone on the boat passing below.

The crowd grew as they reached the top of the stairs and entered Hightown proper. Shops ringed the plaza. Merchants shouted over one another, competing for the attention—and more important, the money—of potential customers. Weapons and clothing, food and potions, exotic hairstyles, everything was available for the right price.

Leech’s body tensed. He had never appreciated crowds, and the assault of colours and noise and smells made him twitchy. He straightened his spine and deliberately stilled his hands. A handful of other people were like campfires scattered across the landscape; this was a kaleidoscope of multicoloured bonfires, bright and overwhelming and threatening to break into a forest fire. His muscles pulsed with the itch, the
need,
to move and respond.

Blue darted towards a hat shop. Rook pulled him up short, but not before a man with a walking staff broke away from the crowd. “Is that the monster that’s been stirring up so much mischief?”

“The Heroes have brought him back for justice!” called a woman.

“Someone get the feathers and hot tar!”

“We’re all out of tar.”

“My brother has some syrup. Would that work?”

“What kind?”

“Treacle. Fresh, too!”

“Right,” said the man with the walking staff. “We’ll treacle and feather the redcap!”

Inga positioned herself between Blue and the crowd. “The redcap stays with us until we’ve finished our quest and saved Brightlodge.”

“Saved it from what?”

“We … well, we’re not really clear on that part yet,” Inga admitted.

“What about my pigs?” That was the man whose pig they had stopped earlier.

“And my fruit cart?”

“And my pub?”

While Inga tried to calm the crowd, Leech saw the man with the walking staff hobbling sideways, out of her line of vision. He raised his staff and lunged towards Blue.

Leech stepped in and kicked him in the side of the knee. The man went down hard. His staff clattered away. He looked up to find himself face-to-face with Blue. His eyes widened and his face paled—typical panic response. Before he could recover, Blue sank his teeth into the man’s arm.

“None of that,” Rook said sharply, giving the rope another tug.

The man waved his bloody arm in Leech’s face. “The thing bit me!”

“He sure did. You’ll want to get a bandage on that.” Leech grabbed the man’s arm and pressed his fingers to the edge of the wound. Bright blood welled and dripped to the ground. “Redcaps aren’t venomous, but any bite wound can be nasty. When this gets red and swollen, use a hot blade to drain the pus. If dark streaks begin to spread, I’ll be happy to amputate it for you.”

“You … you’ll what?”

“It’s a simple enough procedure. We could do it now if you’d like. You start by tying a tourniquet just above the wound. Cut through the skin and muscle, then saw through the bones. Stitching up the skin flaps afterwards can be tricky. The secret is to peel back some extra skin before you do the bone. Took me a few tries to figure out that trick. When it heals, you should have enough of a stump for a hook.”

Inga gently tugged Leech back. “It’s little more than a scratch,” she said. “I’ve had worse roughing around with the youngsters back home. Spill a bit of the good wine over the cut, keep it bandaged, and you’ll be good as new in no time.”

“There’s a lot to be said for a good hook,” Leech called. “Durability, grip strength … if you change your mind about that amputation, you can find me at Wendleglass Hall!”

“We’re in a hurry here,” said Tipple.

“Right.” Inga raised her voice. “The redcap is in our care. You’ll leave him alone, or I’ll knock your block off, got it?”

The crowd fell back. There was no further talk of punishment or syrup and feathers. They gave Leech a particularly wide berth.

Blue laughed and leered as they walked.

“Do you think redcaps and people could interbreed?” Leech mused.

“I don’t know what you’re thinking,” said Inga, “but count me out.”

“Oh, no. I didn’t mean—I just think they have more in common with us than we realise.”

“He set a man on fire,” Tipple pointed out.

“For revenge,” said Leech. “What’s more human than that?”

“Thin man with the ugly mask is nice,” Blue announced, swivelling his head to look at Leech. “Blue will eat you last.”

Tipple burst out laughing.

Leech ignored him and turned his attention to the redcap. He had never been good at casual conversation, but he was determined to show them the possibilities. “Condolences on your dead friends back there.”

Blue shrugged and scratched absently at his crotch.

Leech searched for another approach. “You know, biting a man on the outer forearm like you did back there isn’t the best way to go.”

Blue’s eyebrows rose.

“You’ll get more bleeding from the inside of the forearm.” He pushed up his sleeve and traced the veins that stood out on his pale skin. Blue crept closer, suddenly attentive. “The inner arm’s more sensitive to pain as well.”

Blue nodded hard. He examined his own arm, then touched a finger to his teeth. “Need to sharpen them. Sharp as steel. Make them squeal!”

“Not a good idea,” Leech said. “Let me tell you about this one fellow, a minor merchant. Not the brightest coin in the bank. He refused to let me extract a broken tooth. Three months later, half his mouth had rotted. It was fascinating to watch, and one of the most foul-smelling things I’ve ever come across. He died shortly thereafter. All from a chipped tooth.”

Blue’s shoulders slumped, momentarily transforming him from a bloodthirsty killer to a disappointed child.

“How long did the outlaws have your friends captive?” Leech asked.

“Never. Forever.” Blue adjusted his trousers. “Always, always throats to sever.”

“First redcap I’ve seen with a flair for the poetic,” said Tipple.

“Any chance you could end that flair?” asked Rook.

“Depends on the cause.” Leech studied the redcap’s skull. “The rhyming might be part of his personality, like Tipple’s drinking or your scowling. It could also be a response to stress, or an effect of those nails. He’s far more intelligible than most redcaps. Adding or removing nails in just the right location might let us change his patterns of speech. There’s no guarantee it would be an improvement, though. More likely, it’d make him worse.”

“Forget I asked.”

The wind was rambunctious today, carrying the spray of the falls like horizontal rain as they crossed the bridge leading out of town. Leech peered over the rail. He had no fear of heights, but he respected the water’s power. He had seen the bodies of the drowned, their lungs bloated, their skin pale and wrinkled. Not to mention the waterfall itself. From time to time, someone would take a boat too close to the edge and get caught up in the current. The bodies were rarely recovered. Which was a shame, as Leech would have loved to study the damage inflicted by such a fall.

“What do these scoundrels have planned for Brightlodge?” asked Inga. “Do you know why they were stealing redcaps, or how they mean to destroy the town?”

Blue didn’t answer. He tugged at his rope, keeping to the centre of the wide bridge and disrupting traffic in both directions.

“Do you even know where to find Nimble John?” demanded Rook.

Blue smirked. “John be nimble, John be smart. John, who stinks like herring farts.”

Rook pulled the redcap close. “If you’re wasting our time …”

“Quiet, stupid humans,” yelled Blue, apparently uncaring of his own volume. “They’ll hear you from their boat. Kill you all.”

Leech lowered his voice. “You’re leading us to a boat?”

“Big boat.” Blue chuckled. “Full of ale and hats and rats.”

“How many crewmen?” asked Rook.

“Lots.”

Leech nodded. “Good.”

Tipple stared at him, an odd expression wrinkling his brow and tightening the corners of his eyes. “That’s good how, exactly?”

“It’s obvious, isn’t it? It’s one thing to beat a weaker force, but once we start crushing a larger group, their morale will shatter like old bones.” Leech shrugged. “Should make it easy to get the truth out of the survivors.”

Blue led them several miles upriver to a spot just south of the Boggins. The ground squished underfoot, and the air smelled of decaying vegetation. Insects buzzed about their heads.

Leech wiped moisture from the lenses of his mask. It was a shame they were in such a hurry. Hopefully he’d have time to collect some frogs and leeches on the way back. He was starting to run low on a few species.

The redcap pointed through a curtain of reeds to a large wooden riverboat anchored on the far side of the water. At first glance, there was nothing unusual about the boat. Flat and wide, it sat relatively low in the water, suggesting a full hold. Faded paint on the side traced the outline of either a snake or a dragon, but too much had peeled and flaked away to be certain. Leech guessed the boat could carry a crew of twenty-some, with room for cargo. A peaked roof covered much of the deck, providing shelter from sun and rain. A series of rusted metal oarlocks were secured to the lower railing. Crates and barrels were stacked and tied down near the aft.

“She’s seen some action,” said Rook.

As he peered closer, Leech began to make out signs of battle. The side bore numerous scars that looked to have been made by axes or hatchets. More telling was the row of faded red caps nailed to the roof, possibly as warnings. Leech counted nineteen such trophies.

Blue turned large, hopeful eyes towards his captors. “Kill them now?”