The Court of the Midnight King: A Dream of Richard III Read Online Free PDF Page B

mid-air.
    “What?” snarled the pig.
    The red-haired savage pointed wordlessly. Eleanor clutched the torn sides of her gown but made sure they both saw the symbol, the crowned serpent. She drew deeply on the air, enduring the miasma of their steaming bodies and stale breath. Softly, she began to chant.
    “Stop that,” said the dark one. “Make the bloody witch stop!”
    She paused. “Put down the child,” she said.
    As she spoke, Katherine bit her captor in the fleshy side of his hand. He swore and dropped her. Katherine bounced off the bed and crouched beside it, peering over the edge with bright, watchful eyes.
    Eleanor was trembling violently. Yet she forced a frigid smile onto her face and let desperation give her the aspect of a priestess. The beasts saw the terrible ice-light shine from her face and the gold fire in her eyes. It was as if they shrank. They were not, after all, as big as they’d first seemed.
    “You can force us, if you will,” she said, her voice quick and fierce. “Being but women, like your own mothers and sisters, we cannot stop you. Before you continue, be warned. Lay another finger upon us and you shall be cursed. The vengeance of Black Auset is terrible. And her shadow will follow you from this place to the end of your days.”
    “Wurrds,” snarled the darker beast. The red one went sickly white and crossed himself. They glared from slitted eyes at Eleanor and she thought her threat had failed. She could smell burning. She closed her eyes, shuddering, her lips moving in a plea to the hidden powers: Spare my daughter, spare my daughter. Let them know that I speak the truth.
    There was a soft scuffling sound, thick breathing. She heard the distressed voices of Martha and Nan very faint then rushing closer. When she opened her eyes again, her women were there, and the beast-men had fled.
    ###
    Wind blew veils of snow off the trees. Over ground as hard as iron their horses toiled, their breath fogging the air. Eleanor and Katherine were almost home.
    Silent as a funeral procession they had ridden away from Eriswater, leaden-eyed. Thomas Copper rode with Katherine clasped on the saddle in front of him, a bundle that was more wool and fur than child. Untouched, safe. Martha and Nan, both badly shaken, let their horse be led by the lanky young groom, Tom. Friar Bungay shook his head and muttered prayers to himself as he rode. His arm was in a sling, his lean body bowed in the saddle; he’d taken some bad blows, trying to keep the invaders out of the house.
    Eleanor’s party had survived the raid upon the village; others had been less fortunate. The mercenaries left the village scoured raw; stripped of food and drink, stripped even of animals and firewood. Women had been raped, their menfolk slain or wounded. All they could not remove or despoil they set afire, leaving barns and thatches to choke the air with black ash.
    Only the cold and wet saved the village from destruction. Eleanor was exhausted from binding wounds and soothing distress. She swore privately that she would make amends somehow. She had little money to do so; but she could at least send sheep, fresh fish and wine, and men to help repair the damage.
    After a long, wretched tract of silence, Thomas spoke.
    “They were Queen Marguerite’s mercenaries. It’s said she gathered that rabble in the north, and threw them against the Duke of York while he was celebrating Yule at Sandal Castle. Now they’re on their way to London to claim victory. Drunk on glory.”
    “Then may the Dark Mother and all the denizens of the hidden world help the poor souls who happen to dwell in their path,” said Eleanor.
    “So much for the red rose of Lancaster,” Martha said bitterly. Small, dark and quiet, she was a shrewd woman; Eleanor’s lady-in-waiting in the outer world, her equal in the hidden. “They recruit barbarians who think nothing of raping children!”
    Eleanor caught her breath, thinking of her own manor. Did Lytton Dale lie