Page 86 of The Herlequin: Pitch & Sickle 6
‘We are Sherwood’s heart, Robin and I.’ The Major would have been puffing his chest if he had one. ‘A safehold for the dryad and any other the Hunt has seen fit to pursue these past centuries.’ Was it Pitch’s strained mind, or were the Major Oak’s branches lengthening, widening? ‘They’ve not got what they’ve come for, not once. No reason that will change today, if we put our minds to it. That ankou will fight his fight out there, and we shall do so here.’
‘Thatankou,’ Pitch hissed, ‘has a name. He is Silas Mercer. And if you think for the remotest moment I shall just stay here hiding in the godsdamned brambles while he deals with the Hunt, you are a fucking moron.’ Despite how fiercely he spoke, he moved numbly, his head aching, his chest impossibly tight, scanning the edges of the clearing as though Silas might have left giant footsteps to mark his path. The forest was vast. Run in the wrong direction and it would be too late. He cut off that train of thought and distracted himself by pulling on Silas’s coat. It was laughably too large for his much slighter frame, and running out behind him like a ballgown’s train with their difference in height, but wearing it went some way to loosening the knots in his chest. ‘Tell me which bloody direction…point it out now. Tell me.’
‘Pitch.’ Robin tried to barricade him.
‘Tell me!’ He was shouting again, which was a miracle in itself, considering he could barely take a breath.
‘I will not.’ Robin was firm. ‘He would never forgive me, to begin with, and you are in no state to take on the Wild Hunt, especially one who associates with sorcerers.’
Pitch touched at one of the coat pockets and his stomach roiled. The bandalore was there. Silas had not taken it with him.
Gods.
‘My state is none of your business to decide,’ he snarled, suddenly desperate. ‘Tell me the direction, you vazey cretin, or I shall–’
‘Do what?’ Now it was the Major Oak’s time to bellow, only his came with a showering of sudden autumnal leaves and a gasp from their natural audience. ‘Set fire to a singular hair upon the Herlequin’s head? If that colossus fellow has any to begin with… There was a bald chap once…thin as a rake, half the size of this one, with eyebrows white as the unnatural snow falling. About two hundred years past, would you say, Robin?’
‘I’m not sure it’s very important right now, Major.’ Robin, ever the fucking diplomat.
‘I am truly out of patience,’ Pitch growled as well as any wolf.
The branches to his right rose and fell, in mimicry of a shrug. He had little doubt they had grown, for he could no longer see the brambles where he’d lain with Silas. The branches were favouring growth towards the ground, rather than up, as trees normally went. Their tips were only a balled fist away from the moss.
‘Well best you find some,’ the Major Oak said. ‘That pissy excuse for fire won’t scare them, any more than it scares us.’
Pitch hadn’t even realised he’d brought the flame to hand until then. Gods, it truly was appalling, the lonely flicker upon one fingertip, the unimportant brightness beneath his skin. His ankle may be nearly healed, but the rest of him was quite broken. Will Scarlet hovered close, balling up a fist the colour of gilded gold and shaking it towards the Major, an odd little ally, apparently disliking the summary of Pitch’s inadequacies just as much.
‘I have no intention of scaring them,’ Pitch said. ‘I intend to beat the living daylights out of them.’ He brushed the will-o’-the-wisp out of the way and strode towards the edge of the clearing. He did so with only the barest of limps, sending peri scattering out of his way, clipping a few of the toadstools with his bare feet as he made a determined path to where the leshy had not yet lowered his boughs. ‘I will find him myself.’
‘You cannot leave, fire man.’ The Major spoke quietly in an even quieter clearing.
‘It is precisely what I intend. And call me fire man again at your peril.’ It was Tilly’s own stupid name for him, for one. But he was neither man nor fire daemon, and if the leshy reminded him of it again, he’d pull off ancient branches one by one. After he’d found Silas, of course, and given him the talking to of his life. His many lives.
Led astray by a harpy? Had the ankou not learned a blasted lesson in Highgate Cemetery?
Pitch was so busy distracting himself with the ear-bashing he was going to give Silas that he was paying no mind to Will Scarlet’s chirruping. Which was, as it turned out, a warning– to watch out for the girder of a tree branch standing in his way. Pitch collided with unyielding wood and sent a myriad of curses the tree’s way.
‘Get your fucking stick out of my way, leshy.’
‘We cannot do that.’ Robin stood surrounded by a circle of the toadstools, which were all now shining far brighter than his own flame. ‘I’m so sorry, Pitch. He would not want it. I think you know it, too.’
Pitch did not know what he hated more, the Major’s pugnacious prattle or Robin’s soft empathy.
He definitely despised the dryad’s awful, correct assumption. The very last thing Silas would want was for Pitch to come rushing headlong into the mess he’d made. But the ankou was also an idiotic oaf who would know full well there was no chance in all imagined hells Pitch would sit by when he was endangered.
He moved quickly, headed towards the rapidly shrinking gap he’d been aiming for. There was no edge of the clearing anymore. Rather a tangle of branches coming from overhead, and ivy pushing up from the ground, birthing from the soil like spring had suddenly struck.
‘No.’ He broke into a run. ‘No, don’t you dare. Let me go.’
A sturdy branch pointed its woody finger at him, pressing at the centre of his chest and holding him back. Another caught him from behind, wrapping about his waist and lifting him off his feet.
‘Put me the fuck down, now, leshy.’
The Major drew him back across the short distance he’d made, moving him through the air over a frightened gathering of brownies and peri who huddled together near the hamadryad. Robin was speaking to them, but Pitch was making too much of a fuss to hear a word.
He shouted and protested and swore in every language he knew. Will Scarlet was with him, chittering no doubt about how he should calm the fuck down and listen to reason.
A part of him was doing just that. There was sense to be had in keeping himself safe here. Waiting it out. Letting the ankou deal with the Hunt. The oaf was far more formidable now than when they had first met. And surely the fucking Order or the Lady or Sybilla would decide it time to get off their arses and show themselves?