“I doubt not the Kow chased her there,” Quicksilver said with a quick glance at Cordelia. Seeing her nod, she turned back to the milkmaid. “ ’Tis the most convenient hiding place, after all.”
They set out for the trees, their horses following, the milkmaid calling Dapple. They were halfway there when the heifer came ambling out into the meadow.
“My sweet Dapple!” The milkmaid ran to meet her, completely recovered. Quicksilver followed, carrying the pail, with Allouette and Cordelia close behind. The milkmaid threw her arms around the cow’s neck. “I feared for you so! And, poor thing, your udder must be near to bursting!”
“It must indeed,” Allouette agreed. “You set out to milk her at dawn, did you not?”
“Indeed.” The milkmaid set the pail under the cow’s udder.
“I shall hold her head for you.” Allouette gripped Dapple’s bridle.
When the pail was full and the cow looking distinctly relieved, the milkmaid offered them drinks, but they politely declined and mounted, turning their horses back toward the road. As they went, Cordelia asked, “Was she not overly concerned for that cow? It was not a babe nor even a kitten, after all.”
“Nay—it was her livelihood.” Allouette had grown up on a farm. “Think of it as her working capital.”
Quicksilver nodded agreement—as a squire’s daughter, she had seen how important livestock could be to peasants.
“I had not thought of that,” Cordelia admitted. “If the Kow had slain Dapple, our milkmaid would have been poor indeed!”
“Still, I am sure she is genuinely fond of the beast,” Allouette assured her.
“And most deservedly fearful of the Hedley Kow,” Cordelia said fervently.
An explosion rocked the trail.
The horses shied and the women had to fight to keep them from bolting. When they looked up, they found themselves facing another horse—if one could call it that. Its ears were long and bristled at the ends, its head was like a giant plucked owl’s, its legs rubbery and claw-footed, its tail like a bundle of broom. But it opened its beak to produce a very credible horselaugh and cried, “What fools you women must be!”
“How now, varlet?” Quicksilver asked in a dangerous voice. “What folly do you see?”
“The foolishness of antagonizing so powerful a spirit as I,” the Kow said in menacing tones and padded toward them like a panther, every muscle in motion, its whole stance hinting at massive power waiting to be unleashed. “You have ruined my jest! All morning I led that lass astray, hours I spent to bring her to the point of hysterics when I transformed—but you made me spring the trap too soon, and worse! You were there to comfort her when she screamed!”
“Oh, how treacherous of us,” Allouette said with dripping sarcasm. “Be warned, Kow—it may have been no mere chance that brought us to that place and time.”
“Next you will have me believing in providence!”
“Is not the phrase ‘Divine Providence’?” Cordelia asked.
“Speak not that word to me, nor none pertaining to it!” The Kow’s neck stretched out to double its length as its beak opened, revealing a multitude of pointed teeth. “Foolish wenches, if I could not relish that creature’s horror, I shall savor your flesh!”
Fear clawed its way up in all three women, even in the warrior Quicksilver, for this was no ordinary foe, no human or real animal but a strange and obscene thing of nightmare. But each of them had faced terrifying enemies before and all reacted as they had learned—with a fierce determination to defeat any attack.
“How ridiculous!” Allouette’s counterattack was scorn. “Whoever heard of a beak with teeth!”
“Aye!” Cordelia picked up the idea instantly. “Are not things impossible called ‘rare as hen’s teeth’?”
“Impossible this creature is,” Quicksilver agreed. “Cannot that beak tear as well as any eyetooth?”
“Do you say ‘aye’ to my tooth?” But the Kow’s teeth dwindled on the instant and disappeared. It paced forward, reaching out. “Still, as you say, my beak is sharp enough to shred you!”
“Sharper than its owner, I doubt not,” Allouette returned.
“But duller than my sword.” Quicksilver drew. “My apologies, creature—it is not bronze.”
The Kow eyed the sheen of Cold Iron with misgiving. Then its beak turned into a muzzle with lips that curved up in a grin. “Do you thirst, damsels?” And as they watched in horror, it grew an udder.
Cordelia turned to her companions, wrinkling her nose in disgust. “Why is it so obscene to see a horse with an udder?”
“If you can call that a horse,” Allouette said with withering contempt. “I have never seen so bizarre a collection of parts in my life!”
“Have you never seen a man of parts?” the Kow returned. “Nay, I shall grow some if you wish.”
“Thank you, no.” Cordelia smiled, actually amused. “We all have men at home with all their parts, enough to last us all our lives.”
The Kow frowned, clearly nonplussed. “Have you never learned it is rude to refuse a gift? Nay, taste of my milk!”
“I suspect this creature is beyond the pail,” Cordelia told Quicksilver.
“Alas!” Allouette said to the Kow. “We appreciate the thought.” She suspected that the Kow knew exactly how they appreciated what it was thinking. “Unfortunately, we have no bucket.”
“If Fate is kind, you should indeed not seek to buck it,” the Kow rejoined.
Cordelia kept her smile. “You do not claim that you are Fate, I hope.”
“So should you hope indeed,” the Kow returned. “Nay, make a bucket of bark so that you may taste of my milk!”
“A mammal has milk only because it has young to suckle,” Cordelia pointed out. “Have you, then, given birth?”
“Any who know of me give me a wide berth indeed! What is this ‘mammal’ you speak of?”
“Why, any creature which suckles its young,” Allouette explained.
The Kow frowned. “This is to say that a bird with webbed feet and a bill is a duck, but a duck is a bird with webbed feet and a bill!”
“The bill for thus baiting us will likely be too high for you to pay,” Quicksilver said darkly.
“Then you would be well advised to duck when I say so!”
“It has the egg of an idea there,” Cordelia admitted.
“No doubt that will make the creature brood upon it,” Allouette answered.
“Be sure you would not wish to meet my brood,” the Kow retorted.
“Are there more than one of you, then?” Cordelia asked in wide-eyed innocence. “I had thought you a singular creature.”
“What, like the phoenix?” The Kow grinned again. “Would you have me disappear in a burst of flame, then?”
Allouette saw her chance and said with withering scorn, “As though you could!”
“Think you anything is beyond my scope?” the Kow demanded, affronted.
“I would not see you burnt to a cinder.” Allouette backed her horse away, widening her eyes as though in fright.
“Behold what you fear, then!” the Kow cried triumphantly.
“Back, ladies,” Quicksilver barked with sudden dread.
They all managed to back their horses a few paces away before the Kow, laughing hysterically, burst into a geyser of flames that ballooned out to singe the ground for thirty feet around before it died as quickly as it had bloomed, leaving only a mound of ashes behind.
Cordelia heaved a sigh of relief. “Most cleverly done, Allouette! You baited the creature to its own doom!”
Allouette flushed, pleased at the compliment and wondering if it betokened real acceptance.
Cordelia turned to Quicksilver. “How did you guess that it meant to burn us to char with itself, lady?”
“I would have to think somewhat to answer that.” Quicksilver frowned. “Suddenly I knew what it meant to do—perhaps because it was too gleeful in its eagerness to demonstrate what Allouette had said it could not do, perhaps because its nature is mischief and malice . . . I cannot say for certain.”