“And?” the master general prodded.
Gemma glared at the monk, but finally admitted, “So I raised Kriegszorn.”
“From the dead?”
“Shhhhhh!” everyone hissed at Quinn’s surprised yelp.
“Yes. From the dead,” Gemma whispered. “But the spell should have only lasted twenty minutes. Maybe thirty.” Gemma pointed toward the clearing. “Why is she still alive, Ragna?”
“It’s Master General to you, defiler—”
“Hey!”
“—and I have no idea. She came here like that. Looking for you.”
“That battle was a thousand leagues away.”
“And yet here she is. In the decaying flesh.”
“I don’t understand,” Shona said, trying to peer through the trees to get a better glimpse. “I’ve never heard of something like this before.”
“It gets even stranger,” the master general happily went on, much to Gemma’s annoyance. “Parts of her are decaying while parts of her regenerate.”
“What?”
“And, if you look at the clearing, some trees are dead and some are filled with beautiful, bizarre flowers I’ve never seen before. And on some nights, weird lights radiate from the area.”
“What does any of that mean?” Laila asked.
“I have no idea,” the master general said with a disturbing chuckle.
“What do the elders say?”
“Do you think I told anyone about this? Are you mad? If I had, I knew that Sprenger would have you burned as a witch as soon as you came back. Of course, that was my fear before I knew you’d become a princess.”
“You do know you’re actually saying prince-ass, don’t you?” Gemma demanded.
“Only Joshua knew about your unholy horse and he had no answers either.”
“She’s not unholy,” Gemma argued, “and none of this is her fault.”
“No. It’s your fault. You did this.”
“I don’t know how.” Gemma looked at everyone. “Seriously. I have no idea how I did it. None.” Gemma held up her hands, gazed at them in wonder. “Am I magickally gifted?”
“Doubt it,” Keran muttered.
Gemma scowled at her cousin just as the horse finally turned away from its grazing spot so Quinn could get a really good look at it. What he saw horrified him.
There was no flesh on the right side of the creature’s face, giving it a disturbing smile. Where its eye should have been, there was just a blob of blood. Chunks of its skin and flesh were missing from its neck, revealing rotting tendons that moved anytime it opened its mouth or moved its head. Pieces of it were dropping off its gut, and all that remained of its back right leg were tendons.
It didn’t seem to be suffering. Yet Quinn didn’t care. Pulling his sword, he started forward. He was going to end it now.
But Gemma grabbed his arm.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
“To kill that thing.”
“You’re not killing my horse.”
“Gemma, it’s an abomination.”
“It’s Kriegszorn.”
He pointed. “Look at it. Did Kriegszorn have fangs? Because it seems to have fangs now.” He pointed at another spot in the clearing. “There are bones over there of something that it has recently killed and, I’m guessing, eaten.”
“That’s wild boar. It doesn’t mean she eats humans now.”
“Are you listening to yourself?”
“I am not going to let you kill my horse and that’s the end of the discussion!”
“Uh . . . Gemma?”
“What, Keran?”
Keran never got a chance to answer as the half-beautiful, half-horrifying horse’s head poked its way through the trees inquisitively. And, like the mighty, fearless warriors they were, all of them—except Ragna—screamed hysterically and dove for cover.
* * *
“That was just embarrassing,” Ragna complained. “You even scared the abomination.”
“Stop calling her that,” Gemma said as she brushed the dirt from her leggings, chest, and face.
“So what are you going to do with her?” Keran asked.
“I’m going to see exactly how dangerous she is.”
“She’s dangerous,” Ragna insisted.
“We just scared her with our screams. How dangerous can she be?”
“When she was traveling here to find you, there were rumors of a devil horse killing people indiscriminately across the lands. When I secured her in here . . . those rumors stopped. So she’s dangerous.”
“That’s not proof it was her.” But even Gemma knew her argument was weak.
Gemma felt horrible. What had she done to her poor horse? Kriegszorn had been an amazing, loyal horse and she’d turned her into this horrible thing.
Before she made any decisions, she had to make sure putting the horse down was absolutely necessary.
Gemma stepped back into the clearing and called out to Kriegszorn. Well . . . she tried. What came out was a weak, squeaked-out whisper. She tried again. Still nothing. Finally, she got out, “Kriegszorn!”
The horse spun around and faced her.
Gemma cleared her voice again. “Kriegszorn, it’s me. It’s Gemma. Come here, girl. Come here. Come here . . . beautiful.”
That last bit was kind of hard to get out, but she did it.
Kriegszorn stared at her from across the clearing; then she was suddenly charging Gemma.
“Uh-oh.”
“Gemma!” Quinn barked at her from the tree line. “Get out of there!”
But Gemma refused to run. Kriegszorn had traveled all this way to find her. She must remember her. She must still love her. Gemma forced herself to stand her ground.
Kriegszorn came closer and closer, hooves tearing up the soil between them. When she was inches away, Gemma shut her eyes and waited to end up the way many enemies had ended up during battle when Gemma and Kriegszorn had run them down. She heard Kriegszorn whinny loudly and opened her eyes to see the massive horse on her hind legs, front legs high in the air.
A few seconds later, she came down, the ground around them seeming to shake with the impact. Kriegszorn moved closer and rested her big head on Gemma’s shoulder. Just as she used to do when Gemma brushed her mane or stroked her neck.
She could feel blood from the open wounds on the right side dripping onto her chainmail-covered shoulder but it was the normal, left side that was pressed comfortably against Gemma’s ear and neck.
“Oh, Kriegszorn. How I’ve missed you, my beautiful girl.”
She stroked the horse’s neck and ran her fingers through her mane, telling her, “Don’t you worry. When this is all over, no matter what happens, you are going back home. My family will take care of you.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Quinn demanded, now standing behind her.
Before Gemma could tell him to fuck off, as she liked to do when he overstepped his bounds, Kriegszorn suddenly pushed her aside with her large body, opened her mouth to reveal the large number of fangs she now had. And she roared at Quinn. Something horses didn’t really do either.
That’s when Quinn shifted to his battle-ready centaur form, with full antlers and fangs. He pulled his sword and axe.
Her battle-cohorts came out of the trees to stare at Quinn with their mouths open, but Ragna simply smirked at Gemma and flatly asked, “So now you’re bringing centaurs to the monastery? What’s next, Brother Gemma? Legions from one of the hells?”
Keran chuckled. “Wait until ya meet her sister’s dogs—owwwww! What the rude-fuck was that for, ya evil bitch?”
* * *
“What do you think?” Thomassin asked his cohorts. The same men he’d trained with all those decades ago. They’d been through hell together, but hell hadn’t mattered because they always had one another’s backs. It was strange, though, planning all this without Joshua right by their side. Gods, how Thomassin missed him. But saving this order was the last thing he needed to do for his friend, and he’d make sure it was accomplished.
“He’s going to make a move on her,” Bartholemew guessed.
The three men watched Master General Ragna dismount from her horse and hand over the reins to her squire. She stopped to speak to several of her direct commands before sending them off.
“Joshua said he wasn’t afraid of her,” Brín reminded them.
Bartholemew shook his head. “Joshua lied. That woman is . . . that woman.”
“If she sides with Sprenger . . .”
“We won’t let her,” Thomassin decided. “We’ll go talk to her. Like calm, rational men.”
Nodding in agreement, they all set off after Ragna but she abruptly stopped and turned toward them. They immediately stopped too and began to look . . . anywhere. The sky. The ground. Thomassin found a reason to stare at a broken fence. She watched them for a moment, then disappeared into the stables where her horses were kept.
“Remember that time I had to battle an army of demons?” Bartholemew asked. “And I was all alone until you three could get to me. And it took you nearly an hour?”
“Yes,” Thomassin replied. “I remember.”
“Still less scary than dealing with that woman.”
* * *
Sprenger followed two of his guards into the stables. He knew Ragna was in here. She liked to wash off the grime of the day near her horses, so her army had set up a space for her within the stables. Then some dwarf engineer she knew had created an elaborate water system that with the assistance of a moving horse conducted water through tubing to spray down on her while she stood under it.
That’s exactly where Ragna was when one of his guards grabbed her shoulder to alert her to Sprenger’s presence. But before a word was spoken, Ragna’s wet hand reached out and grabbed the monk’s arm, twisting until the bone snapped at the shoulder. With her free hand, she grabbed the monk by the throat and lifted him off his feet, holding him high above her head.