Page 56 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6

The woods grew ever darker. Sweat tickled his temples. At least he wasn’t bloody cold for the first time in days.

Pitch barely heard the sound over the rasp of his own turbulent breathing. A shivered cry holding poignant notes of distress. An animal certainly, the bleating made it clear.

Pitch veered away from the noise.

The cry rose high, as though his redirection was unwelcome. The animal appeared in some amount of pain, but he was in no mood for sorting out another’s discomfort. He was having enough fucking trouble as it was with his own.

He’d gone not more than three steps, and the mournful sound came again. Playing through the trees, slipping around the trunks and filtering through the undergrowth.

Pitch’s hurried walk slowed. Only because the terrain was particularly awful here. Nothing else. Certainly not because the cry was so bloody pitiful that it made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’

He slipped off his coat, tossing it over his shoulder. The brisk air took no time at all to tease at him, his sweat-ridden body coming alive with gooseflesh. Gods, he reeked. Just as well he’d not have Silas anywhere near him. Ever again.

Pitch trudged towards the sound, grimacing at a stone that had managed to find its way into his boot.

The reason for the pained cry grew evident quickly enough. A young doe lay beside a decaying fallen tree. Her front right fetlock was grasped cruelly between the steel jaws of a trap. A rusted trap at that, showing signs of having been laid in nefarious wait for a long while.

The animal had some sense about her. She’d not churned the earth up into a frenzy trying to escape. She lay quite still, calling out for help, her blood darkening the fallen leaves around her. It seemed an odd placement for the lump of steel, nearly hidden beneath the rounded bulk of the trunk. Likely the tree had fallen after the hunter had set the trap, and they’d not returned to retrieve it.

Pitch sighed– to steady his run-weary breath, of course. Not to ready himself for wrestling with the spring-set steel. ‘Stop that noise.’

The deer shuffled herself about, enormous brown eyes fixed on him, a small pink tongue teasing at the edge of her mouth. Her ribs flared wildly. The injured animal snorted, concerned at his closeness. Her short tail twitched unhappily.

‘Stay quiet…I’ll not do a thing if you keep screeching like that.’

How did one talk to a deer? He shrugged off the thought. It hardly mattered. She would need to stay still while he freed her, or he would just leave her to bleed out. He laid his coat on the log, hoping he’d found a suitably dry place to do so.

Pitch moved in quickly and quietly. He could be featherlight when he so desired. At least that particular talent had not abandoned him.

The doe dug her hind feet in, lifting her haunches to push herself from his reach, dragging her belly through blood-soaked mulch.

‘Stop moving, stupid animal. You’ll cause more harm.’ He crouched down and settled onto his hands and knees, moving slowly towards the stricken animal. ‘Easy now. Easy.’

He sought to mimic the reassuring tone of the ankou. The low timbre Silas adopted when he spoke to horses, or to spooked daemon princes.

But the deer showed no appreciation for Pitch’s interpretation of a dead man’s steady influence. The pretty animal, her colours the shades of a new autumn forest, wheezed and snorted and shuffled more vigorously, rattling the chain which anchored the trap to something now crushed beneath the fallen tree. Her cry rose as the steel fangs dug in more fiercely.

‘No, no. Stay still.’ Pitch’s well-worn patience lost another layer, dangerously thin. He sat back on his heels, wiping off his dirtied hands and reconsidering his rescue.

As he pondered why the blazes he’d stopped at all, a fluttering of light drifted over the trunk: will-o’-the-wisps all the shades of a rainbow. An odd time of day for them, the critters usually preferring evening when their auras were on finer display. They breezed around him, parting in two waves like he were a giant stone in a stream.

‘Will you piss off?’ He waved at the gossamer orbs of light, but they darted easily away from his reach, flowing down around the frightened deer. They swarmed her, but the creature seemed unperturbed. In fact, she relaxed notably, giving up her frantic struggle to escape him. She still watched him closely though, unblinking, damp nose twitching.

One of the will-o’-the-wisps broke free of the group, a curious little thing that held a multitude of colours, a rare sight. It zipped towards him, dancing in the air right before his eyes before slipping back to hover over the trap.

The message would be plain to a blind man. Hurry on and release the deer.

Pitch shifted onto all fours once more. The ground was incredibly unpleasant, and his sweat was cooling too fast. ‘Fine, but you had best not be luring me in for a concerted attack.’ He crept forward slowly. ‘I know you little bastards have teeth when you need them.’

He was less than a foot from the deer now, the will-o’-the-wisps settling on her neck and the crown of her head like a delicate, colourful veil of light. She panted hard, her tongue lolling further from her mouth, but she did not struggle.

Close enough now, Pitch settled back slowly, carefully onto his knees. ‘Easy now. Easy.’

This time round the doe seemed more appreciative of his reassuring tone and did not try to dismember herself to escape him. Her tongue slipped back into her mouth, her black lips closing. But not once did her gaze leave him.

‘Ready for freedom?’

A pang struck at him. A deep anguish that slithered from the hole he’d thought he’d buried it in. Freedom. What an unreachable treasure. And all the running in the world would not deliver it to him.