Chicks in Chainmail (10 page)

Once upon a time
—

Which is to say there are still living descendants, so we can't name names.

There was a beautiful young
girl—

Six feet tall, twelve stone, with shoulders like a blacksmith's from swinging a two-handed sword for hours on end—but beautiful. Really beautiful. Call her El.

Who fell in love with a handsome prince.

An avaricious, land-grabbing, double-crossing, sneaky young prince; but he looked like a male model, and he had a lot of land—most of it recently acquired by treacherous means—and a whole lot of money. You may call him Charming if you like. No one else did.

And the bit about the glass slipper was pure fiction.

The prince decided the house he'd found was perfect. He'd been riding for hours, looking for just such a property, and he was delighted his journey was over. The house he'd discovered was half hidden in the
Enchanted
Forest
, facing onto a flower-filled, sun-speckled glade; its cut-stone walls were covered with ivy and its well sat out in front at the end of a charmingly landscaped little path.

Solid construction, he thought. The miniature ramparts atop the stone walls came complete with miniature crenellations—too small for bowmen to hide behind, but they added a nice touch. Arrow slits decorated the second floor—they were glassed over, though, so no one could actually shoot out of them. The machicolations above the main doorway looked real, however—as though someone inside might consider pouring boiling oil onto the proselytizers and door-to-door salesmen who came calling. He approved. The place was definitely a concept house. He would bet the builders had pitched it to the family by saying, "Think castle. Your own little castle."

A battering ram would go through it in an instant, of course; it wasn't a
real
castle. But it would be a grand location for intimate little parties, it would serve as a strategic garrison for
some
of his troops in the event of activity in the area… and it would extend his territory about fifteen leagues directly south into what was currently Queen Hilde's kingdom.

Location, location, and location—the real selling points when acquiring property.

He turned to his aide. "We'll use the usual story. Go up, see who lives there, and let's find out how difficult they're going to be to get rid of."

"Somebody get the door!" El's stepmother had incredible lungs.

El, busy sharpening her sword, didn't even look up from her whetstone.

However—"I'm doing something," Carol shouted, and a beat behind her, Martha yelled, "El's downstairs! El, get the door!"

The doorbell clanged again.

El rolled her eyes and put down her blade and went to see who was there.

She found a lean, whippet-faced man with mournful eyes waiting on the front step, cap in hand. "Your prince requires your assistance, madam. Our hounds chased a stag while we were hunting, and became lost in the woods. We have been searching for them for days, without luck. Have you seen or heard them?"

She looked down at the man—his eyes didn't meet hers when he spoke, and she disliked the way he twisted his cap; also, she didn't think he looked dirty or tired enough to have been hunting lost hounds for days. He was lying about the hounds—she'd bet on it. She glanced across the yard to where the prince waited on his fine white steed. The horse looked like he'd been freshly bleached and starched; for that matter, so did the prince.

Worse—although she didn't follow politics closely, she'd had a queen, not a prince, the last time she heard. She doubted that had changed without anyone mentioning
it
—she also doubted that the flunky's identification of the prince as
her
prince had been in innocent error.

Hunting their doss, she thought. Of course they are. But she smiled at the man on her doorstep, walked past him out into the yard, and curtsied to the prince.

She clasped her hands and tried to look shy. The prince was gorgeous, and gorgeous men didn't make it into El's stretch of woods often. Not even gorgeous slime. She figured she was probably doing a pretty good imitation of a bashful, flushing maiden. "I did near hounds, your majesty," she tola him, "only last night. But I mistook them for the Hell Hounds that so often hunt these woods after dark."

She glanced away long enough to
let
him consider the import of her words, then glanced up to see how he was taking her news. She noted that he had paled. His gaze flicked nervously to the sun, which had passed its halfway point earlier and was steadily creeping down the sky. "Hell Hounds?"

El ducked her head to hide her smile. "Certainly you know of them, my lord. This is the forest of the Folk. Even during the day it is a tricky place, but at night, I would never ride through it. Besides the Hounds, there are also bogles who hunt in the darkness, and the fey folk that try to lead riders astray. Those who wander into the forest at night are rarely heard from again."

The prince looked down at her, then over her shoulder toward his toady, then back to El. "Well," he said thoughtfully. "How interesting. Do you have a spare room where we could spend the night?"

"Alas, sir," she lied, "it would compromise our honor when my brothers returned home from hunting, if they were to find strange men in the house with their women. Worse, when they come back we will have no room to stable your horses—and left outside, I fear the bogles would eat them before morning."

His face fell at the mention of brothers, and further at the mention of bogles. "Bogles, eh? Could you describe these bogles tor me."

Ella thought fast. "Of course, your lordship. Well, none who see them live, of course. Still, they followed me through the forest once, so I can tell you how to recognize their sign. When first they notice you, you'll feel them watching. You'll see nothing, no matter how you look around for them, but you'll know they are there. Next will come the sound of rustling leaves, though you will feel no wind. You'll see tree branches sway, and know they have begun to stalk you. As they get closer, you'll hear whispering, though you won't be able to make out words—bogles are mad, and talk to themselves. And when they prepare for the final lunge, all the animals near you in the forest will fall silent." El shivered. "No one can tell what happens after that."

The prince's nostrils pinched in and his lips thinned to a hard line. "I see." He studied her, and she saw curiosity and some darker emotion warring on his face. "How, then, do
you
live here, fair maid?"

El made her face woeful, and hung her head. "My father made a pact with the lord of these woods that his family could live here in safety."

"A pact, hey?" The prince's face brightened. "Maybe I could make a pact with this lord."

El nodded "Perhaps, though I think you would not want to. My father's pact was to exchange our safety for his Me."

El listened until she could no longer hear the receding thudding of horses' hooves—then she turned away from the well to go back into the house. The danger—and she had no doubt but that it had been a danger—was gone.

Something giggled softly nearby, then said, "I liked the way you described bogles. Very frightening. The prince didn't quite believe you, though, you know." The voice was nigh-pitched and raspy.

El moved back to the well and said, "Who's there? Who said that?"

The chuckle again. "When he left, he said to his flunky, 'We'll check at the first village, and see if anyone eke knows of bogles in the Enchanted Forest. I
want
that house; I don't want some stupid country girl's superstitions to stand in my way.' But you should nave seen the way he near flew out of the forest when I began rattling branches just behind him." The chuckle again. "Set him up good, you did."

She was pretty sure the stranger was hiding in the clump of rosebushes and clematis to the side of the house. She intentionally turned her back on the spot, picked up a bucket that hung on the rope crank, and took the end of the rope in hand, as if she intended to draw up water. "Well, of course he was suspicious," she said. "Everyone knows there's nothing enchanted in the Enchanted Forest. That's just the name real estate agents came up with to sell scrubby wooded lots out in the middle of nowhere to fools."

She heard breath sucked in.

She added, "Every stupid country girl knows there are no Folk," and smiled.

The hidden visitor shrieked. "What?!" The piping little voice shot up at least an octave. "No Folk? Nothing
enchanted
? Just look at me and tell me there are -no Folk in the Enchanted Forest!"

A little creature materialized out of the gathering doom—his rough, weathered skin could have been the bark of an old oak tree, his eyes glowed as red as the jaunty cap he wore, and he stood no higher than her knee. He leaned against a rosebush at the edge of the clearing, arms akimbo, chin jutted out, clearly furious.

El looked around and right through him and then beyond him; she pretended puzzlement. "I don't see anything at all."

He darted closer, and as she continued to stare through him and around him, closer still. She suppressed the smile that twitched at the corners of her mouth.

"Are you blind?!" the creature shouted, and danced up and down in front of her. "Idiot
peasant
! I'm right
here
!"

El clapped the bucket down over his head. "Every stupid country girl knows there are no Folk," she said softly, "but
I'm
not stupid."

The creature under the bucket screamed and fought; he scrabbled for El's hands with long, pointed fingernails, but she held on. He turned into a huge black cat that spit and scratched and bit; when he did, she threw the bucket away and grabbed him by the scruff of the neck. He became a snake, cool and dry and papery in her hands, with strong coils that whipped around her arm. She hung on, gritting her teeth—and he became a fish, slimy and slippery, with barbs at the tips of his spines that stabbed and scratched. He flopped and she lost her grip, and he almost got free, but she caught him in her apron and wrapped him in the cloth—and still she held on.

"Let me go!" he yelped. He was once again the tiny manlike creature she'd first seen, though now he was tangled in her apron.

"No." She got a firm grip on the back of his neck and unwrapped him.

"Dreadful big hulking ox of a girl," he muttered.

"With good reflexes," she agreed, and grinned at him.

He glared at her—those red eyes gave him an impressive glare. "Why aren't you afraid of snakes?"

"I'm not afraid of anything," she told him, and grinned wider, showing her teeth.

He shivered and looked away from her. "You might as well
let
me go. I don't have any gold," he said;

He was lying. They all had gold—and if she hung on to him, she could make him give it to her. But she said, "That's all right, I don't need your gold."

He brightened instantly. "You don't
need
my gold? Really? I don't suppose you'd care to put that in writing?"

She shrugged, but didn't loosen her grip. "I don't mind."

A sheet of parchment and a huge plumed quill pen appeared in his hand. "Oh, marvelous. What luck." He scribbled for a moment, then presented her with the results of his labor. "Here—this says, 'I voluntarily forgo all right to the gold belonging to Widdershins, both now and in perpetuity, both for myself and all heirs and assigns.' Write your name there—or you can just draw your mark if you can't write."

She winked at him and said, "I can read
and
write… Widdershins." She giggled when she said his name. "But it doesn't have the second part of the agreement here, so I can't sign it."

"Second part?" His gnarled brow furrowed, and he shook his head. "That covers everything."

"No. It doesn't cover what you're going to do for me, in exchange for my giving up my right to the gold to which I am entitled."

He looked at her, obviously appalled.

"You don't think I left out that bowl of milk every night—with the cream still on, no less—just to get you to stay around, or that I went through the trouble of catching you and hanging on to you just for the pleasure of your company. Did you?"

"I'd hoped."

"I'll bet."

"You left that milk out for me? Just for me? I thought you'd left it for your cats."

"We don't have cats. I put it out for you every night."

"Oh. Well… thank you. It was very nice. I'm awfully fond of milk—and the cream was especially good." He sighed. "So what do you want, since you don't want my gold?"

"Which you don't have anyway," El teased.

"Er, right."

Ella sat on the grass and held Widdershins firmly on her lap
so
he couldn't escape. His cool skin, rough as oak bark, scraped her hands; his pungent leaf-mold scent surrounded her. "When my mother died, Dad and I managed well enough for a while. I missed my mother, but my father loved me. Half the time he treated me as a cherished daughter, and the other half as the son he'd always wanted."

"I didn't
think
you had any brothers," Widdershins interrupted.

"Of course not. But you don't think I'd tell some land-grabbing Haptigan prince that, do you?"