Paul Durham - The Last Reckoning

Rye looked to Leatherleaf. One of his strange, bulging eyes rotated from Shady to her. It was joined by the other. He fixed his gaze on Rye and she could tell that he was examining the choker round her neck. He seemed as surprised as Rye that her runestones no longer glowed in his presence.

Shady let out a low rumble from his throat.

“Please, Shady. Wait,” Rye urged.

Her hand went to her throat. The runestones were cool to the touch and dim – no different from ordinary stones. Why hadn’t they warned her of Leatherleaf’s arrival?

“Why are you here?” she called to him.

He extended a large fist, his grey skin bulging with knots and blue veins. Rye tensed.

“What do you want?” she tried.

He gestured his outstretched hand in reply. She didn’t expect that he understood her words, but perhaps the confusion in her tone had resonated.

Summoning her courage, Rye took a step forward. Leatherleaf watched her approach intently. He didn’t move to meet her, nor did he retreat.

“Miss Riley!” Mr Nettle gasped from behind her, and held Lottie back.

Rye trembled, but forced herself closer, close enough that she could smell the stench of the bogs on Leatherleaf’s breath. She extended an open palm under the enormous fist that dwarfed her own. The Bog Noblin unfurled his long, clawed fingers as if he would snatch her, but before Rye could flinch, something fell from his grasp into her hand.

Leatherleaf quickly retreated several paces to a deeper gap in the trees. Rye back-pedalled into the clearing before looking at what he’d offered.

She opened her hand, cupping it with her other palm as several hard objects spilled between her fingers. Runestones. In her hands was a broken leather necklace, similar to hers, Abby’s and Lottie’s, but larger. She knew exactly whose it was.

The necklace belonged to Harmless.

RYE STARED BLANKLY at the remains of Harmless’s necklace in her palm. One of the House Rules she had been raised with, all long since broken, related to their chokers. Worn under sun and under moon, never remove the O’Chanters’ rune . Had Harmless taken his off? The alternative churned her stomach. She wondered if this was why their own chokers hadn’t glowed in Leatherleaf’s presence.

Rye cast her gaze at Leatherleaf in shock. Her ears always grew hot when she was angry, and now they burned as if singed by a torch.

“Where did you get this?” she yelled, thrusting her hands outward. She marched forward, blind to the danger. “Did you hurt him?”

Shady followed eagerly at the sound of Rye’s furious voice. He readied himself at her side, furry ears pinned back and chin on his front paws, eager to charge.

Leatherleaf didn’t flee, but his watery eyes fixed themselves on Shady uneasily.

Rye stuffed the loose runestones into her coat pocket and then gently put a hand on the bristled fur of Shady’s back.

“Easy, Shady, don’t move,” she whispered to him. “For now.”

Rye tried to settle herself. Had Leatherleaf sunk his claws into Harmless then tracked her down to show her the evidence out of spite? That made little sense. It was the Dreadwater clan of Bog Noblins who had pursued Harmless Beyond the Shale. Leatherleaf was from the Clugburrow, and an outcast even among his own kind. Although he had grown larger and more imposing than when she had first encountered him last year, she doubted that Leatherleaf had the temperament to risk challenging Harmless alone.

“Why did you give me these?” Rye called. She tightened her grip on her cudgel and stepped towards him.

Leatherleaf rose from his crouch and Rye’s body tensed. But instead of moving towards her, he took several strides deeper into the forest, stopped, and crouched again.

“Perhaps this would be a good opportunity to leave?” Mr Nettle suggested urgently.

Rye waved a hand behind her back and shushed him.

She approached the spot where Leatherleaf had just been, Shady padding softly beside her. When she paused, Leatherleaf loped further away, crouched once more, and looked back at her.

“I think he wants me to follow him,” Rye said, looking back over her shoulder at Mr Nettle and Lottie. “He probably has a nice picnic blanket set up back there and is waiting for the main course,” Mr Nettle said.

Rye hurried back to the frightened horse and pulled a torch and some flint from its saddlebags. Mr Nettle’s eyes went wide.

“What are you doing, Miss Riley? Have you gone mad?”

“What if he knows something about Harmless?” she said. “Maybe he’s trying to show me.”

Mr Nettle sputtered his lips in protest.

“If he meant to hurt us, he would have done it already,” Rye said. She sparked the flint, the torch flared, and she peered into the darkening woods. “Besides, I’ll have Shady with me.”

Shady narrowed his yellow eyes at Leatherleaf. Rye knew it was taking every bit of his willpower to refrain from bolting after the Bog Noblin.

“Take Lottie to the Wend,” she added quickly, before Mr Nettle could protest further. “I’ll hurry back as soon as I see where Leatherleaf leads me. If you find Mama, tell her which way I went. I’ll catch her fury for this – but if Harmless is out there, we can’t take the chance of missing him again.”

Rye’s boots sank into the swampy ground beneath her. Here the wetlands had broken the grip of the forest, the terrain around her filled with rotted stumps and the trunks of splintered pines felled by the water of the bogs. As fearsome as he could be when motivated, Shady was fussy when it came to wet paws. He trailed behind like some princess’s lap cat as he carefully navigated the higher ground.

Darkness fell quickly that evening. Either that or Rye had been following Leatherleaf through the moors for far longer than she’d realised. She finally came to a halt when he did, keeping a healthy distance between herself and the Bog Noblin. He had crouched knee-deep in the shallow muck. His eyes reflected red in her torchlight as they glanced towards a clearing in the distance. Rye followed his gaze. A ring of lights – dozens of them – penetrated the darkness up ahead. She squinted to make out their source.

Rye turned back towards Leatherleaf in search of an explanation, but the Bog Noblin was now gone, the sound of his feet churning the swamp somewhere in the distance.

It seemed Leatherleaf had taken her as far as he intended.

A flicker caught the corner of Rye’s eye. A light broke away from the others and approached with haste. Rye hurried to duck behind a stump covered in moss and blackened toadstools. She quickly snuffed out her dim torch.

The circular glow of a tallow candle spread out over the ground. The man who carried it scanned the bogs with probing eyes from under his cowl. Rye saw that his face was ghoulish white – covered in the traditional corpse paint of a Fork-Tongued Charmer. He paused just two short strides from her hiding place. Rye held her breath and hoped the sour smell of his candle would mask the smoke of her own smouldering torch. Not finding what he was looking for, the Fork-Tongued Charmer returned to the others, sloshing across the damp turf with his heavy boots.

Rye exhaled in relief then hurried after him as quietly as she could, this time disappearing behind the splintered trunk of a fallen tree. She pressed her back against it and waited, making sure no one had heard her, then peeked over the top of the split bark.

An assembly of hooded figures had congregated in a crescent line on a mound of earth rising from the bogs. Each held a thick, bare candle, flames barely flickering in the still air and yellow wax drippings covering their fingers. If the wax burned them, they didn’t flinch. A man was led to the centre of the mound, the jagged point of an impish beak penetrating the dark folds of his hood.