Chapter 51: Bo: In the Finest Tent

Chapter 51: Bo: In the Finest Tent

Bo's breath caught at the sound of the laughter. Of the lunatic laughter swelling in the darkness. It wasn't coming from any of his troops, that's all he knew. Well, that and it sent shivers along his spine.

Not that he missed a step. Not after the horrors he'd faced, even before he'd entered the Bloodwitch's service. Definitely not after the things he'd seen in the past few years.

He never lost his nerve, though, not anymore. The Bloodwitch was a power. She was more than human, and serving her made him feel more than human, too. Braver, stronger, better than human. And more ruthless, because that's what 'better' meant.

He drew his sword and bellowed, "Arms! Enemy in the camp! Enemy in camp!"

A clamor sounded in the night as his troops tossed their tankards and dice aside, and reached for weapons. As Bo stepped into the camp, a handful of men stumbled sleepily from their tents, including Nails, the carpenter-turned-scaffolder-turned-soldier, who stood there arse-naked with a hammer in his hand.

The horn blared, two short, one long, sounding the alert.

"To me!" Bo barked.

Nails blinked at him in sleepy incomprehension, but the new recruit and Seten fell in beside Bo.

"Where's it coming from?" he asked the recruit, hoping his young ears could locate the source of the laughter.

The recruit pointed his sword. "There, I think."

A scream tore through the night--one of his men, dying among the tents--and the laughter grew more gleeful, more unhinged.

"Bo!" He brother toward him with Whit. "Nobody approached camp, I was--"

Except then Whit just ... fell. Nothing touched him, nothing happend. He simply collapsed like his legs had turned to wool. Not dead, not unconscious, just gargling and staring and useless.

"What the halo?" the recruit whispered.

"Stay close," Bo snapped, and a tent burst into flames across the camp.

"Here!" one of Bo's men yelled from the direction of the fire.

The laughing stopped, and the abrupt silence sent another tremble of shivers along Bo's spine.

"He's cornered!" the man yelled.

"Archers!" Bo called, racing toward the voice. "In position! Porcupine!"

"And you doubted me," his brother scoffed, running alongside him.

His brother fancied himself knowledgeable about military tactics despite having been whipped out of his regiment after two years. Still, he'd insisted on trying to teach these bottomfeeders a few basic tactics. Apparently a handful of them had actually listened, too. On the way to the burning tent, Bo passed five of his fighters with their bows raised, standing in a circle around a cookfire, facing away. Scanning for the enemy and covering each other, safe from ambush.

The voice called again. "This way! He--ga!"

Bo skidded around the supply cart and caught motion in the corner of his eye. A man in the shadows was chopping at the ground with a hand-axe, like he was trying to remove a tree stump.The source of this content nov(el)bi((n))

Except there was no tree stump. The man was chopping at one of Bo's men with a hand-axe, bringing the blade down over and over and over again.

From behind, from the flat of a hand-axe.

A rough hand turned him onto his back and he found himself looking up at the blood-faced man. Not a merc. Not one of those vale-cursed mercs.

No, this was the godsdamned yokel with the donkey. Who shouldn't be able to stand after being dragged for an hour, much less walk.

"I'll make you a guarantee," the man said, his green eyes gleaming.

"I--the witch will tear your guts out. She'll tear your bloody guts out for this."

"Here's my guarantee." The man raised his axe to chop at Bo's stomach. "I'll strangle you with yours."

Bo clamped his jaw to keep from whimpering, to bite back the urge to beg.

Except instead of disemboweling Bo, the man twisted the axe suddenly. For no reason--except then an arrow punched through the fabric of the tent, chimed off the axe-head, and sunk into the ground two inches from Bo's leg.

The man had seen the arrow coming for his head. He'd seen the arrow coming from outside the tent. He was more than human, too ...

The man crouched and another arrow sliced the air above him. He vanished through the slit in the tent and Bo breathed too hard and too fast. The blow to his head kept him pinned to the floor for too many dizzy heartbeats, then he forced himself to his feet.

He grabbed his sword and reeled after the man, two images of the camp blurring around him.

By the time he reached the clearing, his double-vision cleared. He saw his archers at the campfire, but only three of them were still standing. The fourth was a heap on the ground, while the fifth was clutching at her chest where the man had thrown his axe at her. It hadn't struck her blade-first, but it still hit hard enough to stagger an unarmored target.

At least the three remaining archers were all shooting at the man stalking toward them.

Except what he did then was, he blocked the arrows and giggled.

Well, no. He didn't block them. He tracked them without a single flicker of his gaze, he tracked them in the air as he stalked forward, and he caught them in the flesh of his right hand and forearm.

Four arrows, five, six arrows embedded in his bleeding, shredded arm.

Then he reached the archers, and by that time they weren't thinking anymore. They were panicked by this laughing horror, this unstoppable thing, and he pulled an arrow from his right hand with a gush of blood and jammed it into the first archer's eye and then the townsman--the one with the now-dead son--charged into sight and tackled another archer and started beating her head against the ground as he sobbed and the man pivoted and stabbed the final archer in the face with the heads of arrows that were impaling his arm.

Not enough to kill but the final archer fell screaming.

Bo staggered toward the man, toward his own death and--

"Bo!" his brother called. "The tent! The pets, the pets!"

He veered sideways, responding unthinkingly to his brother's voice. He jogged past the latrine and the laughter followed him as he burst into his tent. The biggest tent, the finest tent. The tent where he stored the ferret and the kestrel.

His brother stood guard, a longknife in each hand, as Bo uttered the words that the Bloodwitch had taught him, to awaken her creatures.

The crate lid opened and a mangled paw appeared.

The ferret crawled out and the man stepped in, still laughing softly. Sheeted in blood. Free of arrows. Empty hands, bloody arms. Terrible eyes. Laughing and laughing and laughing.