Author's Note: New week, new book! Chapters will now be posted 4 times a week, Tuesday-Friday at 9:07 am.
Sitting by a warm fire with warm soup and his unusually cheery battle maid, Drake was more content than he had been for quite some time. Around him, the camp full of tents and his people were still settling in for the night. Everyone else was done with dinner, and he was too. Yet there was no reason not to sit here a little longer.
“We really should go inside, lord,” Emily said. “You’re going to catch an arrow.”
“Just a little longer.” Drake looked to the clear night sky. “It’s been a rough few weeks. Let me enjoy this peace and quiet before it all goes to shit again.”
In the past month he’d been summoned against his will to a fantasy world, almost ritually sacrificed, inherited his own massive Victorian manor in the middle of some freaky silver woods, gained the loyal of five powerful battle maids and dozens of others, met a hot manor lord named Sky Skybreak, and saved an adorable little girl from bandits.
He’d also brought his butler Samuel back from the dead, saved his battle maid Valentia from being executed for a crime she didn’t commit, learned he could absorb the rarities of others, and finally stopped turning into a wererat. Also, he could regenerate now.
These were good things. Good accomplishments. And ahead waited the capital, and a cabal where he would finally find out why they’d summoned all nine manor lords on such short notice. He was finally going to attend his first cabal.
But first, he decided, he wanted to see his brand new crossbow.
He stood. “Hey Emily, want to see something cool?”
She hopped to her feet. “Always, lord.”
Drake led her to the wagons and hailed the first servant he saw, a clean-shaven, dark-skinned man wearing plain, workmanlike clothes. “Hey there.”
The man turned around, went wide-eyed, and snapped to attention. “Lord Gloomwood! How may I serve?”
“Just need to find something. Where’s my crossbow?”
“Your crossbow, lord?”
“Big metal thing that spits bolts at people. Might have a zarovian carved on it?
“Oh!” The man nodded. “Yes, lord, I believe we have that... this way.” He hurried off. Drake followed in amusement with Emily practically on his heels.
The man reached the back of a wagon, yanked a sheet aside, and then reached into the wagon. With a wince and a grunt, he carefully pulled out what might be the most beautiful goddamn weapon Drake had ever seen. It was a crossbow... but what a crossbow!
The fine wooden stock was black wood, the same as the manor, and drank up the light. The stock dived down where the barrel on a gun would have started, and above it but slightly detached, in place of a barrel, was a four-sided mechanism loaded with bolts.
That part of the weapon was gunmetal gorgeous, and Lydia had been right. There was a metal dragon’s mouth on the end of the stock. Goktul had gone absolutely nuts with this thing.
As the man cautiously handed him the weapon, Drake instinctively grabbed the middle of the stock behind the trigger with one hand and the front of the stock with the other. This weapon was as heavy as he’d expect, but that only reassured him he should respect it. He lifted it sideways to examine the way the bolts worked.
The weapon was already loaded with four bolts, and while he wasn’t sure transporting it loaded was advisable, it was too late to complain. The “limbs” that held the bow strings on each of the four sides weren’t as wide as on a typical crossbow, only a little wider than the bolt itself. Stretched out and cocked, the thick bowstrings looked more like two parallel lines than wide Vs.
Remembering both his classes on rifle ownership and trigger discipline, Drake faced well away from anyone with the weapon still held low. He then hefted the crossbow and rested the back of the stock against his right shoulder, holding the front of the stock with his left hand. This brought the rotating metal mechanism with the four bolts to about eye level.
There were no sights—perhaps there hadn’t been a place to attach one with everything else going on—but the way he could brace this weapon against his shoulder made him feel comfortable eyeballing most shots. This was closer to a rifle than a medieval crossbow.
Which was fucking perfect for Drake.
He assumed all he had to do was pull the trigger and the barrel would spin, like a revolver, to ready the next bolt for release. As he eased the weapon back down and tilted it, he even spotted a lever near the trigger that was obviously a safety or lock of some sort.
This was the weapon worthy of a manor lord. Better yet, Drake could fire it four times without having to reload. He cautiously lowered his weapon to a rest position, glanced at Emily, and smiled. “I’m going to call it Magnum.”
“Ooooooh.” Emily grinned. “Is that a powerful name from your realm?”
“It was Dirty Harry’s weapon of choice.”
“Lord?” Lydia asked. She’d approached as he played with his new murder weapon.
Drake glanced at her and kept his new weapon pointed at the ground. “What’s up?”
“I cannot find Anna.”
The fact that Lydia did not bother to disguise the worry in her voice immediately damped his enthusiasm for his new crossbow. Emily stiffened at his side. Drake took a quick look around the camp and told himself not to panic.
Little kids played hide-and-seek all the time. Maybe she was playing hide-and-seek right now. “And the others?” he asked. “Anyone seen her?”
“She was seen, lord, many times after we began to set up camp. She assisted in those preparations, and multiple people commented on how helpful and cheerful she was. Yet while many have seen her, I cannot find any who saw her after we entered your tent.” She smoothed down her apron. “I cannot find her anywhere.”
Drake looked around the camp again to see no adorable blond-headed children in sight. “Well, let’s go look for the little scamp. I’ll give her a talking to about running off.” He pondered lugging Magnum around the camp with him, but decided not to. Not with Anna missing.
He looked to his servant. “Name?”
“Hugo, lord.”
“I won’t forget it. Put this weapon in my tent, would you? I’ll be right back.”
He handed the magnificent weapon off to Hugo and left with Lydia and Emily to search the camp, even though he knew Lydia had already done that far better than he would. What he needed was time to think. Anna wouldn’t just leave, so... had someone taken her?
How could anyone abduct Anna from their camp? There were people all over, zarovians standing guard just beyond that, and Sachi. Sachi should have smelled anyone who tried to abduct Anna, unless there were so many smells here she couldn’t distinguish between them.
Drake looked to Lydia. “Where’s Sachi?”
“This way, lord.” Lydia set off into the darkness. “She said she would be right back.”
Drake pondered running back to his tent to grab Magnum, but he still carried his trusty club and also had Lydia and Emily to protect him. He’d be fine. As they rushed out of the camp at not quite a jog, the reddest zarovian Drake had ever seen ran after them carrying a club and a shield. Cresh must have ordered the zarovian to stick with Drake at all times.
The zarovian had to rush to catch up. When he did so, Drake glanced his way. “Name?”
“Thak.” The bright red zarovian bared rows of white teeth. “I hit things.”
“That’s great. I need things hit.” He glanced at Lydia. “How far up was Sachi?”
“I don’t know exactly, lord,” Lydia said. “She last told me she planned to scout ahead, but would be back in a few moments.”
They continued until they were almost beyond the range of the large cook fire back at their camp. Drake was just considering going back for reinforcements when Emily pointed.
“She is there, lord.” Emily pointed at a dense cluster of grass and bushes. “In there.”
Emily could see Sachi’s soul despite the dense grass. “What’s she doing in there?” Drake hurried the others toward the clump of leaves off the road. As the big grass shimmied apart Sachi stepped out, still buckling up her armor. She glanced irritably in their direction.
“Could this not wait? I am not a camel.”
Dak realized his mistake too late. Also, they apparently had camels in this world in addition to horses. More to ask about later. “Anna’s missing.”
Sachi’s ears went completely flat. She hissed, sprinted into the road, and raised her nose to the air. Drake could see her nostrils twitch as she searched the wind for any trace of her little blue cupcake. Not long after, her eyes widened.
“Behind us, lord.”
Drake grinned with relief. “You smell her?”
“Yes.” Sachi bared her teeth. “I smell her blood.”
Emily gasped as Drake’s own blood ran cold. It couldn’t... not after all this, all he’d done to get her somewhere safe and warm, not after...
“She is alive,” Sachi said. “But a good ways back.”
“Go,” Drake ordered.
“But lord—”
“Go!” He bared his teeth right back. “I have two battle maids and a Thak to protect me, and no one’s faster than you on open ground. Find her!”
His feral leapt past him and scampered off on all fours like the cats with whom she shared many traits. It was but a moment she had vanished into the dark. With nothing else to do, Drake led his people back to their camp, which was a way’s off.
They were halfway back to the fires when a low hiss stopped Drake cold.
He spun around to find Thak collapsed in the middle of the road, eyes glazed and mouth filled with blood. Before he could ask Lydia what the hell had happened to the big zarovian, Emily dropped to one knee beside him, but not before gritting her teeth and pointing back up the road. “Ass....” she managed, before she collapsed as well.
Spectral purple butterflies lit the night as Lydia flutterstepped a good ways up the road, facing a clump of tall grass, the way Emily had pointed. Lydia tossed a gleaming yellow dagger into the grass like a snake snapping. A man cried out in pain, but then Lydia, too, collapsed.
Drake finally noticed thin streamers of red blood flowing out of Lydia’s eyes and mouth, disappearing into the tall grass like string winding its way out of a doll. He also finally understood why first Thak, then Emily, and then Lydia had all collapsed.
“We lost three rangers that night,” Sky said. “Good ones, which means whoever got the drop on them in my own town was even better.”
“You had rangers watching the house? After our negotiation went so well?
“To protect you, both from anyone who caught wind of our arrangement or any of my own people who did the same. All were exsanguinated.”
That was a big word, but he knew what it meant. “You mean drained of blood?”
It took but an instant for Drake to accept whoever was attacking them now was the same person who murdered Sky’s rangers, and only a moment longer for him to charge the tall grass toward whoever Lydia had been trying to kill. Where Emily had seen a person hiding.
Someone hiding in that grass had a bullshit superpower.
Drake wasn’t simply furious about his people being attacked, nor was he foolish enough to let rage lead him to his own death. He simply doubted he could escape this assassin even if he wanted to escape, and while the only weapon he had was the same trusty club he’d stolen from one of Captain Ro’s men weeks ago in Redbow territory, it was still a club.
Any fool could use a club.
As the worst headache in the world slammed into him, he slowed. He stumbled forward as his vision blurred red. Ahead, streamers of his own blood flowing into the tall grass, and he could feel blood oozing from his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
This hurt. It felt like his blood was being vacuumed right out of his face, but even with the pain that caused, Drake pushed forward. He pushed into a jog, and then a run, teeth bared as his own blood flowed into the grass. He followed the flow like a cat chasing a string.
He spotted a shadow just inside the grass. At his approach, the man turned and stumbled off. Even as he did so, however, blood continued to stream. It was streaming right into the man. While that would kill anyone else, all it did was show Drake where to go.
Tall grass slapped him in the face and arms as he stumbled after the shadow. So much blood had already left his body. No person could lose this much blood and still live.
As towering glass slapped past them both and Drake closed in on the shadow, he realized the figure wore a dark brown cloak. The man was limping visibly, likely from the fact that he had Lydia’s glowing dagger stuck in his thigh. Drake quickly caught up.
The man turned at the last moment, eyes wide and disbelieving. “How are you—”
Drake hit him as hard as he could with his stupid club.
Author's Note: New week, new book! Chapters will now be posted 4 times a week, Tuesday-Friday at 9:07 am.
Sitting by a warm fire with warm soup and his unusually cheery battle maid, Drake was more content than he had been for quite some time. Around him, the camp full of tents and his people were still settling in for the night. Everyone else was done with dinner, and he was too. Yet there was no reason not to sit here a little longer.
“We really should go inside, lord,” Emily said. “You’re going to catch an arrow.”
“Just a little longer.” Drake looked to the clear night sky. “It’s been a rough few weeks. Let me enjoy this peace and quiet before it all goes to shit again.”
In the past month he’d been summoned against his will to a fantasy world, almost ritually sacrificed, inherited his own massive Victorian manor in the middle of some freaky silver woods, gained the loyal of five powerful battle maids and dozens of others, met a hot manor lord named Sky Skybreak, and saved an adorable little girl from bandits.
He’d also brought his butler Samuel back from the dead, saved his battle maid Valentia from being executed for a crime she didn’t commit, learned he could absorb the rarities of others, and finally stopped turning into a wererat. Also, he could regenerate now.
These were good things. Good accomplishments. And ahead waited the capital, and a cabal where he would finally find out why they’d summoned all nine manor lords on such short notice. He was finally going to attend his first cabal.
But first, he decided, he wanted to see his brand new crossbow.
He stood. “Hey Emily, want to see something cool?”
She hopped to her feet. “Always, lord.”
Drake led her to the wagons and hailed the first servant he saw, a clean-shaven, dark-skinned man wearing plain, workmanlike clothes. “Hey there.”
The man turned around, went wide-eyed, and snapped to attention. “Lord Gloomwood! How may I serve?”
“Just need to find something. Where’s my crossbow?”
“Your crossbow, lord?”
“Big metal thing that spits bolts at people. Might have a zarovian carved on it?
“Oh!” The man nodded. “Yes, lord, I believe we have that... this way.” He hurried off. Drake followed in amusement with Emily practically on his heels.
The man reached the back of a wagon, yanked a sheet aside, and then reached into the wagon. With a wince and a grunt, he carefully pulled out what might be the most beautiful goddamn weapon Drake had ever seen. It was a crossbow... but what a crossbow!
The fine wooden stock was black wood, the same as the manor, and drank up the light. The stock dived down where the barrel on a gun would have started, and above it but slightly detached, in place of a barrel, was a four-sided mechanism loaded with bolts.
That part of the weapon was gunmetal gorgeous, and Lydia had been right. There was a metal dragon’s mouth on the end of the stock. Goktul had gone absolutely nuts with this thing.
As the man cautiously handed him the weapon, Drake instinctively grabbed the middle of the stock behind the trigger with one hand and the front of the stock with the other. This weapon was as heavy as he’d expect, but that only reassured him he should respect it. He lifted it sideways to examine the way the bolts worked.
The weapon was already loaded with four bolts, and while he wasn’t sure transporting it loaded was advisable, it was too late to complain. The “limbs” that held the bow strings on each of the four sides weren’t as wide as on a typical crossbow, only a little wider than the bolt itself. Stretched out and cocked, the thick bowstrings looked more like two parallel lines than wide Vs.
Remembering both his classes on rifle ownership and trigger discipline, Drake faced well away from anyone with the weapon still held low. He then hefted the crossbow and rested the back of the stock against his right shoulder, holding the front of the stock with his left hand. This brought the rotating metal mechanism with the four bolts to about eye level.
There were no sights—perhaps there hadn’t been a place to attach one with everything else going on—but the way he could brace this weapon against his shoulder made him feel comfortable eyeballing most shots. This was closer to a rifle than a medieval crossbow.
Which was fucking perfect for Drake.
He assumed all he had to do was pull the trigger and the barrel would spin, like a revolver, to ready the next bolt for release. As he eased the weapon back down and tilted it, he even spotted a lever near the trigger that was obviously a safety or lock of some sort.
This was the weapon worthy of a manor lord. Better yet, Drake could fire it four times without having to reload. He cautiously lowered his weapon to a rest position, glanced at Emily, and smiled. “I’m going to call it Magnum.”
“Ooooooh.” Emily grinned. “Is that a powerful name from your realm?”
“It was Dirty Harry’s weapon of choice.”
“Lord?” Lydia asked. She’d approached as he played with his new murder weapon.
Drake glanced at her and kept his new weapon pointed at the ground. “What’s up?”
“I cannot find Anna.”
The fact that Lydia did not bother to disguise the worry in her voice immediately damped his enthusiasm for his new crossbow. Emily stiffened at his side. Drake took a quick look around the camp and told himself not to panic.
Little kids played hide-and-seek all the time. Maybe she was playing hide-and-seek right now. “And the others?” he asked. “Anyone seen her?”
“She was seen, lord, many times after we began to set up camp. She assisted in those preparations, and multiple people commented on how helpful and cheerful she was. Yet while many have seen her, I cannot find any who saw her after we entered your tent.” She smoothed down her apron. “I cannot find her anywhere.”
Drake looked around the camp again to see no adorable blond-headed children in sight. “Well, let’s go look for the little scamp. I’ll give her a talking to about running off.” He pondered lugging Magnum around the camp with him, but decided not to. Not with Anna missing.
He looked to his servant. “Name?”
“Hugo, lord.”
“I won’t forget it. Put this weapon in my tent, would you? I’ll be right back.”
He handed the magnificent weapon off to Hugo and left with Lydia and Emily to search the camp, even though he knew Lydia had already done that far better than he would. What he needed was time to think. Anna wouldn’t just leave, so... had someone taken her?
How could anyone abduct Anna from their camp? There were people all over, zarovians standing guard just beyond that, and Sachi. Sachi should have smelled anyone who tried to abduct Anna, unless there were so many smells here she couldn’t distinguish between them.
Drake looked to Lydia. “Where’s Sachi?”
“This way, lord.” Lydia set off into the darkness. “She said she would be right back.”
Drake pondered running back to his tent to grab Magnum, but he still carried his trusty club and also had Lydia and Emily to protect him. He’d be fine. As they rushed out of the camp at not quite a jog, the reddest zarovian Drake had ever seen ran after them carrying a club and a shield. Cresh must have ordered the zarovian to stick with Drake at all times.
The zarovian had to rush to catch up. When he did so, Drake glanced his way. “Name?”
“Thak.” The bright red zarovian bared rows of white teeth. “I hit things.”
“That’s great. I need things hit.” He glanced at Lydia. “How far up was Sachi?”
“I don’t know exactly, lord,” Lydia said. “She last told me she planned to scout ahead, but would be back in a few moments.”
They continued until they were almost beyond the range of the large cook fire back at their camp. Drake was just considering going back for reinforcements when Emily pointed.
“She is there, lord.” Emily pointed at a dense cluster of grass and bushes. “In there.”
Emily could see Sachi’s soul despite the dense grass. “What’s she doing in there?” Drake hurried the others toward the clump of leaves off the road. As the big grass shimmied apart Sachi stepped out, still buckling up her armor. She glanced irritably in their direction.
“Could this not wait? I am not a camel.”
Dak realized his mistake too late. Also, they apparently had camels in this world in addition to horses. More to ask about later. “Anna’s missing.”
Sachi’s ears went completely flat. She hissed, sprinted into the road, and raised her nose to the air. Drake could see her nostrils twitch as she searched the wind for any trace of her little blue cupcake. Not long after, her eyes widened.
“Behind us, lord.”
Drake grinned with relief. “You smell her?”
“Yes.” Sachi bared her teeth. “I smell her blood.”
Emily gasped as Drake’s own blood ran cold. It couldn’t... not after all this, all he’d done to get her somewhere safe and warm, not after...
“She is alive,” Sachi said. “But a good ways back.”
“Go,” Drake ordered.
“But lord—”
“Go!” He bared his teeth right back. “I have two battle maids and a Thak to protect me, and no one’s faster than you on open ground. Find her!”
His feral leapt past him and scampered off on all fours like the cats with whom she shared many traits. It was but a moment she had vanished into the dark. With nothing else to do, Drake led his people back to their camp, which was a way’s off.
They were halfway back to the fires when a low hiss stopped Drake cold.
He spun around to find Thak collapsed in the middle of the road, eyes glazed and mouth filled with blood. Before he could ask Lydia what the hell had happened to the big zarovian, Emily dropped to one knee beside him, but not before gritting her teeth and pointing back up the road. “Ass....” she managed, before she collapsed as well.
Spectral purple butterflies lit the night as Lydia flutterstepped a good ways up the road, facing a clump of tall grass, the way Emily had pointed. Lydia tossed a gleaming yellow dagger into the grass like a snake snapping. A man cried out in pain, but then Lydia, too, collapsed.
Drake finally noticed thin streamers of red blood flowing out of Lydia’s eyes and mouth, disappearing into the tall grass like string winding its way out of a doll. He also finally understood why first Thak, then Emily, and then Lydia had all collapsed.
“We lost three rangers that night,” Sky said. “Good ones, which means whoever got the drop on them in my own town was even better.”
“You had rangers watching the house? After our negotiation went so well?
“To protect you, both from anyone who caught wind of our arrangement or any of my own people who did the same. All were exsanguinated.”
That was a big word, but he knew what it meant. “You mean drained of blood?”
It took but an instant for Drake to accept whoever was attacking them now was the same person who murdered Sky’s rangers, and only a moment longer for him to charge the tall grass toward whoever Lydia had been trying to kill. Where Emily had seen a person hiding.
Someone hiding in that grass had a bullshit superpower.
Drake wasn’t simply furious about his people being attacked, nor was he foolish enough to let rage lead him to his own death. He simply doubted he could escape this assassin even if he wanted to escape, and while the only weapon he had was the same trusty club he’d stolen from one of Captain Ro’s men weeks ago in Redbow territory, it was still a club.
Any fool could use a club.
As the worst headache in the world slammed into him, he slowed. He stumbled forward as his vision blurred red. Ahead, streamers of his own blood flowing into the tall grass, and he could feel blood oozing from his mouth, his nose, his eyes.
This hurt. It felt like his blood was being vacuumed right out of his face, but even with the pain that caused, Drake pushed forward. He pushed into a jog, and then a run, teeth bared as his own blood flowed into the grass. He followed the flow like a cat chasing a string.
He spotted a shadow just inside the grass. At his approach, the man turned and stumbled off. Even as he did so, however, blood continued to stream. It was streaming right into the man. While that would kill anyone else, all it did was show Drake where to go.
Tall grass slapped him in the face and arms as he stumbled after the shadow. So much blood had already left his body. No person could lose this much blood and still live.
As towering glass slapped past them both and Drake closed in on the shadow, he realized the figure wore a dark brown cloak. The man was limping visibly, likely from the fact that he had Lydia’s glowing dagger stuck in his thigh. Drake quickly caught up.
The man turned at the last moment, eyes wide and disbelieving. “How are you—”
Drake hit him as hard as he could with his stupid club.
