Page 60 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6
‘Settle down, all of you.’ The creature’s honey voice was smooth even when stern. ‘Stop that foolish giggling and don’t even think about using his language. If I hear one filthy word repeated, you’ll be sent to the bog for a week. Now, come on. Let’s deal with that trap, Cornelius. This blood’s no good for anyone.’
The will-o’-the-wisps gathered at Pitch’s feet, and the tinkling bells rang out anew.
The stag, Cornelius presumably, tilted his broad head. Bone scraped against metal, and the pressure at Pitch’s ankle eased. He dug his fingertips into his knee, bracing for more hurt.
‘That’s it, that’s it. A little more,’ the hidden instructor coaxed. The stag’s head tilted further, forcing the folds of the trap to open.
Pitch whimpered at the dreadful sensation of metal dragging from flesh, the steel slow to pull from where it was embedded deep. He was woozy, set to topple back if not for holding so fast to his own knee. A tug came at his trousers, the material tightening around his calf muscle.
‘Pull clear now, quickly as you will.’
He thought the instruction meant for him and braced to do as ordered, but his leg moved of its own accord. It lifted from the vicious embrace of the trap, shifting until his knee was sent towards him. Pitch groaned into the back of his teeth. Fuck, he’d never felt so bloody human, so more aware of their delicate constitution.
‘Careful with him now.’
The tinkling of those bells came again and he could see well enough their cause. Peri. A long line of the delicate creatures busied themselves over his leg, their silver hair shifting like worms, chiming as the strands met. They held fast to the fabric of his trousers. There were at least a dozen of the normally impossibly shy creatures, whose origins lay in a long-ago union of nymphs and woodland fae. The musical accompaniment was pleasant enough, until they set his heel to rest against the soil. They did so as delicately as they could, but his enraged muscles and bone flared like a bonfire. Pitch shouted his unhappiness to the woods.
‘Put that away, this instant. They are trying to help you. Don’t you dare burn anyone.’
Pitch blinked through his distress, wondering what the blazes the creature was on about.
It did not take long to realise. His hands were aglow with that miserable flame of his.
‘That hurt,’ he grumbled, but stifled the meagre show. ‘And I’ll burn you all if it turns out you are taking me from one trap to another.’
The stag shifted closer, lowering his head. Pitch leaned away from the pronged tips, and his back touched the trunk. The coarse hair at the stag’s mane shifted.
‘What we’re trying to do is get you out of our woods. Strangers are not a good thing to have amongst our trees, not with the Hunt about.’
The speaker finally deigned to show themselves. A small pair of scaled green hands emerged from the thick ruff of fur beneath the stag’s chin. A head came next, no bigger than the pad of Pitch’s thumb, rounded and wrinkled like a walnut shell, the same hue as one too. Making for a stark contrast to the creature’s forest-green body, which was smooth and scaled as a snake. Pitch had not seen a hobgoblin in a while, on account of the creatures normally preferring to hide away in the branches and toss pine cones, or indeed walnuts, at passersby. ‘Come now, everyone, give our visitor some space. He seems a surly one.’
Pitch was grateful for his rescue, but cautious. The peri leapt off his leg, the tinkling of bells growing mad as they scattered, drops of quicksilver rushing off into the undergrowth. The brilliant light of the will-o’-the-wisps had shifted away, and for the first time, Pitch had a clear view of what had become of the hunter.
He was lying in a rather disconcerting heap a few feet away. The angle of his head was unpleasant. A narrow trickle of blood ran from his nostril, almost prettily, with all the colourful light playing against it.
‘Is he dead?’ Pitch knew which answer he’d prefer. If he could stand, he’d break the man’s neck himself.
The hobgoblin clambered off the stag’s shoulder and slid down the animal’s foreleg, nimble as a spider down a web, coming to rest on the splay of a hoof.
‘Either that or he will wake with a terribly stiff neck. Won’t be many who’ll miss him here. Been a thorn in our side awhile with his hunting…not that we begrudge him looking for a meal…’ The stag shifted, huffing a breath through rounded nostrils. ‘I know, Cornelius, I know. You begrudge it well enough, seeing as it’s your kind he’s trying to put in his pot, but it was his methods that were darkest of all. You know well enough how cruel his trap is, young man. And he checks them so rarely that any animal caught is likely to starve before he puts his knife to them.’ The creature leapt from its place atop the stag’s hoof to land next to Pitch’s ruined ankle. There was something of the snake in the sinewy way the hobgoblin moved, a quiet elegance despite its less-than-elegant appearance. ‘You did a fine thing, saving that doe. Cornelius is indebted to you.’
The stag dipped its wide head, and despite being intolerably uncomfortable, Pitch squirmed a little at the praise.
‘Stop with all the bowing nonsense.’ He reached a hand towards the animal. ‘Bring yourself closer, help me to my feet. I need to get back to my companions.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ the hobgoblin admonished. ‘You’re not standing on that foot anytime soon. I’d be surprised if you’ve not broken some bone in there.’
So would Pitch. Just the merest flex of his toes made his eyes water.
There was no sign of his usual rapid rate of healing. His bones should be beginning to knit already, the torn flesh closing over, but he was in no state to trudge his way out of these bloody woodlands. Not even close.
He eyed the stag. The animal was broad and muscled. Getting onto his back was going to be torturous, but then so was having to listen to Silas’s endless lecturing about getting oneself into stupid situations if he did not find his way back soon.
‘Horns, over here, now.’ He waved the stag closer. ‘Help me to my feet.’
‘Not horns, you tit. Antlers.’ This was not the honey-voiced hobgoblin. This was harsh and deep as the distant thunder, which chose that moment to rumble, making the speaker sound ever more dramatic. The earth bulged, a small peak rising in the soil just beside the trap. In reality they were half the creature their theatrical voice made them sound. A gnome poked it’s head out of the dirt and decaying leaves. Their peaked head held a cap of damp soil, their long pointed nose dripping with brown fluid. ‘I say we strike him over the head again, drag him out of the woods and dump him in a field where the Hunt can find him. Clementine? What say you?’
‘I say, Tuppers, that’s a tad extreme. And we are not abetting the Hunt in any shape or form. There’s nothing to say that this is the creature the Herlequin is searching for anyways.’