Another roar sounded, this one from the other side of the soldiers. Ree’s heart jumped in his chest, then he grinned. Jem must have decided to help.
The ruin of an old building was Ree’s stage; all that was left of it was half a wall that he could stand on. He hung the lantern and unshielded the side he needed, then stepped into its light. The effect on the soldiers was better than he’d dared to hope: They cringed from his hugely magnified shadow.
A whole chorus of roars erupted, some of them—to Ree, anyway—sounding like they came from little children.
Ree breathed in deeply and bellowed, making his voice big. “Begone! This is my territory!”
He didn’t expect them to break and run right then, but they did. Maybe the shadows from the rest of the ruins made him look scarier, or maybe it was all the howls and roars coming from everywhere around the camp.
There were a few screams, too, men, not women or boys. Ree dropped back out of the light and shielded the lantern and tried to ignore the way his stomach knotted up. If some of the people who’d been chased out of their homes and . . . hurt wanted to pay back some, well, it wasn’t any business of his.
He leaned against the ruined wall, shuddering. This wasn’t over, not by a long way.
A shape loomed out of the shadows. A meaty hand grabbed for Ree’s throat. He ducked aside, gulping. It was the big one, the commander.
Ree’s lips drew back in a snarl, and he launched himself at the soldier. The man wasn’t in his armor, just a shirt and pants, but he had a sword in his right hand. That wouldn’t matter if Ree was right up close.
He caught the man’s shoulders, digging his claws in while he arched his back so he could get his legs up and use the toe claws where it would hurt most.
The big bastard made a sound that might have been a scream, and Ree heard metal hit stone. His nose wrinkled at the man’s smell of sour beer and worse. His toe claws got a grip, dug in.
The man grabbed at Ree’s chest, trying to pull him away. That let Ree use his right hand to dig his claws into the man’s eyes, his throat.
The big man’s choking scream died to a horrible gurgling noise, and he pitched forward.
Ree scrambled to pull away from him and bit back a yelp when he found the man’s sword the hard way. His feet might be tougher than a human’s, but they weren’t horn.
He stumbled away from the wall and loose stone and collapsed, gasping. His foot stung.
“There he is!”
Ree half-scrambled upright before he realized it was Jem’s voice. A moment later, boys—or maybe young men, Ree wasn’t sure—surrounded him, caring nothing for his fur or for anything but that he was hurt and that he’d freed them. The chatter while they unshielded the lamp and bandaged him made him want to be sick. He hadn’t thought it would be that bad.
“They’ll come back,” he said when the young men quieted down a little. “Maybe not those ones, but others.”
“Those won’t be back.” Jem sounded grimly amused. “They dropped all their weapons.”
People gathered now, women and children and some older men who Ree guessed weren’t fit enough to be put into the army. They weren’t scared of him, and they weren’t treating him like some kind of wild animal.
“What happens when others come, then?” Ree demanded. “More of them, because of the terrible army of hobgoblins that chased those away.” It didn’t matter that the “terrible army” was a handful of youngsters making noises. That wasn’t what the Grand Duke would hear.
Instead of fixing things, he’d made them worse.
Jem frowned, but he looked stubborn and determined, not angry. “We’ve got their stuff. All of it. We can fix things so we can keep them away.” He smiled. “You’ll help, Ree, right? You’ll be the fearsome hobgoblin king for us?”
“I’ll help.” He couldn’t say anything else, really, not when he’d made sure there’d be trouble. “Granddad’s going to complain, but I guess we can feed everyone until stuff can be rebuilt.” Ree bit his lip. “Maybe make walls out of the places they burned, and traps and things.”
“We’ll manage.” Jem said with a nod. “Come on. Let’s go home.”
It wouldn’t be easy, Ree thought. Boys who were just about old enough to be men, frightened women and children who’d lost everything they knew . . . No one was complaining, though. Maybe they were just glad to be alive, as he and Jem had been that first night after escaping Jacona. It hadn’t mattered then that they had nothing except each other.
Now they had something to protect, something to fight for, but they still had each other. Ree caught Jem’s determined look, and Jem smiled. “We’ll look after them, Ree. Like we look after each other.”
Jem looked like a man. Like a young Garrad. Men protected and helped those in need. Men cleaved to their friends and their promises.
“Yeah,” Ree said, his heart suddenly easy despite the danger ahead. “Yeah, we will.”
Matters of the Heart
by Sarah A. Hoyt
Sarah A. Hoyt was born in Portugal, a mishap she hastened to correct as soon as she came of age. She lives in Colorado with her husband, her two sons, and a varying horde of cats. She has published a Shakespearean fantasy trilogy, Three Musketeers mystery novels, as well as any number of short stories in magazines ranging from
Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine
to
Dreams of Decadence
. Forthcoming novels include
Darkship Thieves
and more Three Musketeers mystery novels. She currently lives with her family in Colorado.
“Hello the house!”
Ree jumped when the unfamiliar voice bellowed outside the farm gates. As a hobgoblin, having got himself mixed up with a cat and a rat during Change Circle, he was proscribed in most places. Here, too, though the people who lived near Garrad’s farm had gotten used to him and didn’t fear him. In fact, since he’d helped them escape the soldiers who had come last summer and burned most of the farms around here, Ree had no fear of being seen. Except by strangers.
He dropped the shovel he’d been using to muck out the goat stalls and, pushing aside the goats, walked out of the stall, locked it, then walked out of the barn and across the farmyard, to where he could get a view of the gate.
Last week’s snow coated the ground in a thin, brittle shell that crackled under the new boots that hid Ree’s nonhuman feet. The air had a cold, dry taste tinged with the smell of wood fires; that meant it was going to stay below freezing even if the sun was out. Ree’s breath steamed, and he wrapped his arms close around his body.
The new wall protecting the farm was about seven feet tall, too tall to see past—it was taller than Jem and topped with sharp bits of stone and metal—but the iron gate the village ironmonger had done for them, in gratitude, was big enough to let the donkey and cart through, and they didn’t go outside the farm or the forest without weapons or on their own any more. It was also made of vertical shafts, like spears, and you could see between them. And if you took care to stay kind of to the side of the wall as you looked, no one could see you.
The three men outside the gate were definitely strangers, all of them on horses. Good horses too, which to Ree were horses no one in the region could possibly afford—tall of leg and sturdy. The man at the front wore fancy armor, the kind Ree remembered Imperial officers wearing, and had what looked like a brand new red cloak over his shoulders. He looked about forty, blond and bearded, with that hardened look all soldiers got sooner or later, and he looked angry.