It’s Tuesday!
Go home, Tuesday, you’re drunk.
No? You’re gonna have your say and damn the consequences? Well, okay, but only if you promise to talk about a certain Captain Claymonte and her Winged Riders today. You will? Way to go, Tuesday!
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The Shape of Family
Part Fourteen – Pieces
by Rick Cook Jr
Their injuries were great, but Claire’s need was greater. She helped those most able to patch her soldiers up, kicked at Combs a couple of times to try and wake him. He mumbled but didn’t stir.
Hughes and Dawson. Were they dead? The bandersnatch made a point in not killing the rest of them, so why would he do so with Sergeant Hughes and Private Dawson? He nudged Jeffrey again after tending the worst of the wounds. Sadie leaned against a wall, nursing her own shredded legs, naked once more and no longer seeming to care that she was.
When she still couldn’t rouse her traitor, Claire knelt beside the pool of water and felt around for the man’s jacket, lost in the transformation Sadie had undergone to the jellyfish. She pulled it free and made a sound of disgust as skin and hair slid free from it.
“This is a rather gross process,” she said to Sadie as she wrung out the jacket and placed it over the woman’s chest.
“It is called skin-changing for a reason,” the woman replied, voice hitching as she pulled at loose strands of some gossamer filament from the wounds in her leg. Stripes of flesh ripped, torn, muscle pink and bulging from within.
“What is that?” Claire asked, nodding at the black filaments the woman tossed aside.
Sadie winced as another one came loose. “Something from the creature, I suppose. I did not know I could hurt it.”
“Well, at least someone can.” Claire tended Sadie’s wounds, wrapping them as best she could, but the injuries were extensive. “Will you be able to walk? I need you for this next bit.”
“I do not heal like it does. If I become something else the injuries will still be present.”
“I’m taking that as a no, then.” Claire frowned. “Could you track the beast if you were, say, a wolf?”
Sadie smiled sadly. “I do not know the wolf. But I have forms I could take.”
“Well, you better turn into one and we’ll carry you when we have to.”
“I need food if I am going to be changing over and over.”
“Right. You lose quite a bit of mass each time, don’t you?”
“It is not about the mass, just the way it is. The change requires a lot of energy, and I am weak.”
“I have other soldiers down here somewhere,” Claire said, pointing back the way they had come. “If I can wake this bastard, I’m going to find them and then we’ll get out of here.” She stood and turned, but Sadie grabbed her arm, twisting her back.
“Captain.”
“What? I have things to do.” She resisted the urge to yank her arm away from this abomination. I need her.
“Thank you for not murdering me on sight. For realizing that what I am is not what that other creature is.”
Claire hesitated, but nodded. “I have Twinners and a Horse-whisperer in my employ, Sadie. The Winged Riders are no strangers to the strange.”
Sadie nodded, a sad smile on her pained face. She let Claire go and Claire felt ashamed for a moment. Just a moment. Then she knelt against Jeffrey and splashed water in his face. Slapped his cheeks.
She’d seen men with head injuries go down and never come back up. Coma, they called it. She still thought of it as the slow death.
She leaned down closer and whispered, “I’m not ready to court-martial you just yet, but damn it, Combs, I need you to wake up. I need your strength or I’ll run you through where you lay.” Still nothing.
She didn’t have time for delicacy. Grimacing, she pulled one of her gloves free and slung it over her shoulder, then reached into his trousers and squeezed to the point of crushing, and that finally pulled the man from his slumber, yelling wordlessly as his eyes came into focus and he realized what was happening.
Claire slipped her hand free as he turned on his side away from her, vomited on the dark earth.
She wiped her hand on her own trousers and slipped the glove back on. “I’d apologize for that, but I think you deserved it, Combs.”
He heaved a couple more times, then turned over and curled into a ball, protecting his tender things as he stared at her, anger and frustration and worry all creasing his face.
“What happened?” he croaked. “Where are the girls?” Then his eyes fell on Sadie and her condition and he tried to rise up, but only succeeded in vomiting again.
Claire stood and offered him a hand; he managed to stand after a few more moments.
“Have a drink while I tell you how this all went to so much shit.” When she was done, he nodded grimly.
“This is my fault. If only I’d gotten him when he didn’t know I was here.”
“Renee stabbed him with my dagger and it amounted to nothing,” Private Tanner said. He was injured, but not incredibly so. He could walk, at least.
“The only damage anyone’s managed to do is your horse-woman here,” Claire explained, and Jeffrey went to Sadie, checking her injuries. There was something there, in the way they looked at each other, or Claire wasn’t a Captain. And suddenly it all made sense.
“Combs, with me. We have a Sergeant and Private to find.”
He reluctantly let himself be pulled away, rubbing at his sore head. “Where’s my blade?” he asked.
“According to your woman, the Kingsguard that she freed took it and fled.”
“And they left me to die? Cowards.” They left the tunnel with a borrowed spear still glowing with the mushroom spore.
“Do you blame them? They were freed by a mouse after watching a man made of smoke slaughter their friends.”
“When you put it that way,” he said, trailing off.
They walked in silence. Claire wanted to berate him, but there would be time enough for blame later, if they lived through it all.
Finally he said, “I’m sorry I knocked the wind out of you.”
She grunted, but didn’t respond.
“I was only doing what you taught us to do, you know.”
“How do you figure that, Jeff?” She rounded on him and stopped in the blue glow. “We thought you had something to do with all of this. That you were in league with this monstrosity somehow.”
He grimaced. “I didn’t handle it well, I’ll admit. I was… flustered, I guess you could say.”
“You seem taken with the horse-woman.”
“She has a name.”
“Yes, Sadie, we’ve had a few conversations.”
His sharp intake of breath made her eyes narrow. “What?”
“Just surprised, is all. Getting her name was like pulling a tooth.” That was a lie, Claire would have bet on it.
She let it go. Not important at the moment. They walked on, past the room where they’d found him unconscious, taking the path Sergeant Hughes had taken with Dawson. “She is an interesting woman. I assume she told you the tale of her nephew?”
“She did. She could have left the twins to die to save her own kin, but she didn’t. She stuck with them.”
Claire shrugged. “So I’ve gathered. She seems angry at the prospect more than anything.”
He didn’t respond and she didn’t blame him.
“Jeff, can I count on you from this point forward? We’re up against a wall here and I have a feeling that if we let this creature breed we’re going to have much larger problems than your court-martial.”
“You’d bring me up on charges for this?”
“I’m considering it.”
He sighed and they practically tripped over the unconscious bodies of Sergeant Hughes and Private Dawson. Knocked out from the look, like Jeffrey had been. While they roused their companions, she asked again, “I need you for what’s coming. Can I count on your loyalty?”
He didn’t hesitate this time. “Of course, Captain. It was a momentary slip. Our motivations are aligned now.”
It took a few minutes but they roused their companions, and Claire was more than a little relieved that none of her soldiers had died.
Sergeant Hughes sat up with Jeffrey’s help. “Did we win?” she asked, holding her head.
Claire said, “Afraid not, Sergeant. He knocked the two of you out and assumed your forms. Stole away with our twins.”
“Rat bastard. He caught us by surprise.” She stumbled up to her feet, wavered a moment, then nodded. Dawson got to his feet with a little less trouble. “Where are the rest?”
“Waiting for us. We’re going to use Sadie to track the beast and finish this.”
“Sadie?”
“The horse-woman. She’s been able to hurt the creature when weapons have had no effect.”
“Well that’s comforting. And I see you’re alive,” she said to Jeffrey, socking him in the shoulder. He had the good grace to blush at least. “You’re lucky Captain didn’t gut you.”
“We’ve buried that hatchet, so to speak,” he said. “I guess you’re my superior now, huh?”
She grinned as they started walking back. “I guess I am. Captain, can I make him do jumping jacks or something?”
“If we live through this, you can make him run the empire.”
He groaned. “I love the military, I love the military,” he chanted as they walked.
When they got back to the room with the small pool of water, her soldiers had gathered in some imitation of marching order, though half could barely stand. Sadie still lay on the ground, a human.
“Couldn’t pick a form?” Claire asked as they got back, and everyone had a moment of glad reunions.
“Can’t concentrate. Hurts too much,” Sadie said as Jeffrey went to her. He lifted her delicately and arranged her so that she was hanging from his neck and cradled in his arms like an overgrown child.
“That’s fine, Sadie,” he said, emphasizing her name. The woman blushed but held tight.
Clair sighed at the news that the woman couldn’t change her shape. “It’s gonna be a tough march getting out of here, Wings. Let’s give it what you’ve got.”
To Stalbridge, then. Regroup, bandage up, gather intel. From the Kingsguard. Father Mason. Anybody who might know about this sun cult now that they knew this bandersnatch was connected to it.
Anybody but Maggie. Please not Maggie.
They left the tunnels under the tree, coming out into scant daylight. She half-expected it to be the middle of the night.
An odorous burning met her senses, and she covered her nose with a sleeve, staring around. “What is that wretched smell?” she asked.
And then heard the sizzling. The blue glow from the mushrooms rubbed on their weapons was etching the metal, smoking as it evaporated. Pockmarked tiny holes in her heirloom sword, gift from her father.
Sergeant Hughes’s sword didn’t smoke, though. “Bring that here,” Claire said, reaching for the woman’s blade. Sergeant Hughes came forward into the sunlight dappling down through the tree limbs and suddenly the mushroom glow ignited. Smoke and an acrid tang hit Claire’s nose again.
“The sunlight is reacting with the mushrooms,” she mused. She took a spear and banged it against a tree, where it shattered. Shit.
“Sheathe your weapons, prevent the damage however you can,” she announced, and they all obeyed. They pulled secondary weapons, daggers and cudgels. They looked like thieves coming back from an unsuccessful raid.
The ride to Stalbridge was unpleasant. Jeffrey borrowed Sergeant Hughes’ horse and rode with Sadie. Hughes rode with Claire and seemed highly uncomfortable, but Claire ignored it. The other horses were needed for the injured and it wouldn’t do to get blood all over herself.
They came to Stalbridge after nightfall, a bedraggled lot, road-weary, some feverish, a wound going septic here or there. Kingsguard met them on the road near town and Claire directed them to tend to her men’s wounded, to station watch around the town and alert her if anyone was sneaking about at night.
The first and last thing she wanted to do was see Maggie. She left Sadie in Jeffrey’s care, directed Private Dawson to oversee the wounded, and told Sergeant Hughes to take whoever was hale enough to canvas the town once more. Starting with Father Mason. She saluted and took Private Tanner with her, though the man had a few scratches of his own.
And Claire found herself at the door to the inn, listening to the laughs coming from within. A bath, a mug of ale, and a warm body waited on the other side of this door. She sighed. A hanging might wait, too.
She pushed open the door and stepped inside.
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This was a transitional piece, burying some conflict and getting us into the right place for the final act, which will be transpiring over the next few weeks!
Panning For Clouds 