things? Gossamyr felt a strange warmth rise in her face. She lowered her staff and looked away so he could not see her discomfort. The blazon must be shed. Soon.
“I merely require direction to the next village,” she said. “Is it very large? I must purchase a swift horse and, as you suggest, some clothing.”
“Yes, I favor a fine dress of damask for you. And long red ribbons for the plaits in your hair.”
Gossamyr snorted and flipped the silver-tipped end of one of her thick plaits back over her shoulder. “Ribbons? Do you romance me, then? I’ll have you know I do not succumb to a man’s charm so easily—”
“Bloody hell!”
Gossamyr froze, the tone of Ulrich’s voice alerting her to the vibrations now obvious in the ground. Vibrations increasing in strength and moving toward them. She’d been so busy chaffering she hadn’t been paying attention.
“Don’t look now, Gossamyr, but you are soon to discover consorting with Jean César Ulrich Villon III is not for the faint of heart.”
Gossamyr did look. And what she saw loosed her demon-take-me smile.
The silhouette of a wide, squat figure barreled toward them. Dust plumed about it in a furious cloud. It wasn’t a man. It wasn’t even mortal.
Danger had arrived.
FOUR
Gossamyr swung her staff, bending into a defensive stance. She hooked the applewood parallel beneath her outstretched right arm. Peripheral vision sighted Ulrich, stalking up beside her, his fists bared and swinging for fight. “If you’ve not a bigger or pointier weapon, then stand back!”
“I’ve the will to survive, my lady, so you stand back.”
“I know what I’m doing!”
“As do I!”
“Do stay out of my way!”
She spun to catch the bogie in the gut with the steel-hard staff. Impact shook her feet from the ground. Tottering two steps to the left, she found her balance.
Ulrich yelped. She spied him shaking a fist that obviously had more impact on himself than the bogie’s hindquarters.
The beast let out a yowl and gripped her staff. The span of that grip covered a third of the longstaff. Gossamyr leaned backward to counter the attack. Landing her derriere shocked stinging prinkles up and down her spine. Shaking the vibrations from her skull she leaped to her feet, drawing the staff before her in a half arc of warning.
Bogies were dumb as wood, but when enraged were difficult to contend. Usually they were more breath than roar—and oh, did their foul breath wield a malodorous bite. Their square bulky bodies were solid as stone, save, their bald, flat heads; the skull proved thinner than parchment. Only problem was climbing the mountain of bogie to reach the prize.
A vicious wind of foul breath and gnashing incisors rose up behind Gossamyr. She spun, prepared to defend. The bogie shrieked and tumbled midair, soaring over her head, and landed the ground behind her.
Gossamyr pierced Ulrich with a dagger of a look.
The man countered with his own cocky wink and a tilt of the crossbow he wielded. “I’m keeping my distance!”
Rolling and shrieking, the squat brown bogie stirred up the dirt from the ground in a billowing cloud. The crossbow quarrel—wedged in the bogie’s gut—splintered and was crushed to pulp. Now the beast lay prone, its skull level with Gossamyr’s shoulder.
“Leave him for me!” Gossamyr yelled. Levering her leg back to force momentum through her body, she swung hard, meeting wood to skull. The definite dull crunch of shattering skullbone thundered in her ears.
A deft twist of her staff placed it like a spear in Gossamyr’s palm. Stabbing it into the bogie’s eye, the applewood met with little resistance. The body shuddered, jittering the staff in her sure grip. The ground shook. The mule brayed. Yowls to stir up a slumbering swamp beast from a bed of muck assaulted the air. With a final shudder of stout hairy limbs, the bogie gave up the ghost. The stench of such finality coiled into the air, wilting the freshness with a heavy veil.
Brown matter oozed from the skull. Gossamyr tugged out her staff and tamped it on the ground to clean it off. The ooze clung.
“Nasty bit of business that,” Ulrich commented.
Heavy breaths panted over her lips, but a smile stole Gossamyr’s disgust. She had done it. Her first challenge—alone, without Shinn looking over her shoulder—and she had been successful. The thought to retreat hadn’t even occurred. Danger had approached and she had stood at the ready.
“Yes!” Gossamyr said in an elated whisper.
Crossbow tilted against his shoulder, Ulrich stomped over and studied the oozing carnage. “Now that shall leave a mark.”
Spinning on the insolent, Gossamyr landed her staff with a click aside the crossbow. “I am going to leave a mark on you should you persist in interfering.”
“My lady.” He pressed out a placating hand. “There was a challenge to be met!”
“Expertly mastered by me!”
“You? Ha!”
“You laugh? I—”
“It was my quarrel brought down the thing.”
“I killed the beast!”
“Yes, and with great savor, I note. The thing is dead as a doornail.” Ulrich strode to the mule and, flipping open a tattered saddlebag, poked about inside. Drawing out a small horn, he uncapped what Gossamyr guessed to be cleaning oil for the weapon.
The fetch fluttered down from the sky. She offered it a smart bow. Danger annihilated. Shinn would be pleased. Circling the beast to take in the carnage, the fetch then alighted into the crystal sky to twinclian in a shimmer of dust.
Unaware of the exchange, Ulrich tucked the oil horn inside the saddlebag and strapped the crossbow across Fancy’s back. So he had assisted. Next time she would not allow him such opportunity.
“I cannot promise to stand idly by should such need again arise.” Ulrich strode by Gossamyr, finger to lips in thought. “It is my manner, fair lady, to help when a damsel requires saving.”
Damsel? Gossamyr slid a look to the left then the right. Where be this damsel? She was the only—Ah. So he thought…?
She spread her shoulders back, lifting her chest. Fisting her fingers before her, she hissed, “Do I look like I need saving?”
Dancing blue eyes took in her obstinate pose in a quick cap-à-pie flight. “Actually…no.”
“Just so. In the future keep your mortal weapons to yourself.”
“Indeed? Mortal weapons. Ahum.” He assumed a haughty pose, thumbs hooked at the waist of his striped hose, one foot stretched forward and his body cocked at an angle. “So says the damsel with the sparkly throat.”
“I—” Gossamyr slapped a palm to her throat.
“I suppose I must thank you,” he added.
“For saving thee?”
He chuckled. “No, for reminding me of which I forget. There is a damsel in need of rescue. And she will not argue my help. I must be off.”
“Saving damsels? What sort of pitiful, unoriginal quest—” She stabbed a proud thumb into her pourpoint. “I’ve a mission to save the—”
“The what?” Mirth tickled Ulrich’s lips into a slippery smile and now his tone danced teasingly. “The world? Is not such a quest reserved for armored knights and champions wearing their lady’s favor on their sleeves?”
“I am not here to save your world. It is my world