Strife & Valor: Book II of The Rorke Burningsoul Saga by Regina Watts (red queen ebook .TXT) 📕

at a village festival than a protective cooking garment. The spoon clutched in its hand dripped brown stew fairly close to the color of its wide eyes: aside from this so-called implement, not one of them was armed…though now I had to wonder if the brown trousers rolled up around Yelp’s knees really were his own.

After moving from tense face to tense face, I looked back at Yelp. “Where is the Dardrie family?”

The gimlets populating the house exchanged a glance. All of them, Yelp included, shook their heads or shrugged in variation.

Exhaling in displeasure, I looked at the one with the spoon and said, “Finish your supper, then get out of this house and leave its animals alone.”

The pair who had been seeing to the fire took my command immediately, scurrying past us to stumble out the door and vanish off into the night. Yelp, looking relieved that I was reasonable, said a few hasty things to his friends before hurrying to the door, himself. Rather than passing through, he paused on the threshold and gestured that we should follow him.

This time, we did. We had planned to take the horses, but if the gimlets were open to persuasion and all (or even most) could understand the common tongue as well as the ones in the Dardrie house, coming in on horseback would add an unnecessary element of intimidation. Given how jumpy the creatures were—and how many there must have been to have successfully captured the town and held it for almost five days—anything I could do to reduce the odds of conflict would be a certain boon.

After all…there was going to be enough conflict with their leader.

When the city was, as Elishta-bet sometimes said, a stone’s throw away, we were relieved to see that the inundation of light was not from houses that stood ablaze. There did seem to be some wild bonfire burning in the town square if the halo of light arcing in the sky was any indication, but the vast majority of the light we had seen from the distance appeared to be from lamps and lanterns and candles and all manner of other things left burning in the houses.

And inside all these brightly lit houses, moving about as though the properties were theirs and they had done such things for years, were the gimlets.

But they were not just in the houses, we were soon to find. As we penetrated the boundary of Soot with our guide hurrying along the road before us, other gimlets became apparent moving about the streets. They went to and fro much like the ones Valeria reported before the farmhouse.

These, however, carried items other than firewood. In the hands of one, for instance, I noticed a small box from which dangled a necklace fit with a small sapphire—perhaps the only item of value that the true owner of that box would ever possess. Another hurried with a few printed books, and one bore a thick fur coat plundered from someone’s closet.

If they noticed us in their single-minded scurrying, they were far less afraid than the gimlets in the Dardrie farmhouse. I suspect their numbers gave them confidence. All around us, more lizard-eyes peered from cobblestone alleys and dusty panes of window glass. The town pulsed with activity due entirely to the little robbers.

And I speculated wildly as to their intentions for us, for the town, for the citizens—until, at last, we emerged in the village square to stand before Gundrygia.

THE WANDERER

I DID NOT see her at first. The blaze of the bonfire raging in the square was so bright, so feverish, that it blinded me. And imagine poor Valeria! While the durrow hissed and threw her hands over her wincing face, I struggled to take stock of gimlets numbering fifty or more.

Some playing flutes of bone and drums of animal hide, they danced and skipped and barked in jubilation around their fire—and, my eyes soon allowed me to perceive, a throne produced with pieces of furniture plundered from the cottages of Soot. Tables had been interconnected and chairs overturned so that the central seat rose high before the flames. The gimlet with the jewelry box scrambled expertly up this artificial incline and knelt at the left hand of the throne. There Gundrygia, resplendently arranged in a bright gown she had surely made with magic rather than condescending to steal, reclined like the languid sovereign she certainly was.

“At last! At last—my knight has arrived. Hail, Paladin!” The drumming reduced to a steady beat as, permitting the gimlet to scale her throne and hang the necklace around her pale throat, Gundrygia called, “Hail, Burningsoul. Look, my little treasures! Your brother, Yelp, has brought the finest offering of all.”

A few of the lizards howled in delight and ran to embrace Yelp, who wagged his tail like a pleased canine to receive the adulation of his friends. Despite several glances from Branwen, I kept Strife sheathed for now. I am glad to say that, unlike her, Valeria was diplomatic when it came to towns held hostage by strange witches and the lizard people they controlled.

“We understand you called for Rorke,” Valeria answered on my behalf, gesturing to me. “That you are holding this town and its innocent people captive to have an audience with him.”

“Yes,” answered the witch in a droll tone. “With him…not with his companions. But, why, what is that you have there?”

Gundrygia leaned forward in her seat, gesturing toward the lantern that I had begun to suspect was a sacred artifact seeded among our party by forces with ulterior motives. Valeria lifted it and assured the witch, “Only the light by which we’ve traveled here. It keeps wolves at bay, and worse things, too.”

“A pity it won’t protect you from my children. Go on! Take the lantern for me.”

The time for diplomacy passed that fast; that fast, I brandished Strife. It and I pushed between Valeria and the mob of gimlets that rushed her, but too many came