At least they’d passed the first hurdle, the first real test, and if the truth about Mia hadn’t come out, both of them would have flunked, and he knew it. Tiana, no matter what, would have killed herself rather than allow them to do to her what was just done to Mia, and he’d have turned around and said the hell with it rather than sit back and watch it done.
“How’d you find out so much about this?” he asked her.
“I, too, had my briefing, Master,” she replied.
“Oh, yeah? Anything else you know that you’re not telling me?”
“Nothing of importance.”
He looked around. “I wonder where Marge is? It’s pretty late for her to be up, but I hope she didn’t go to sleep in that forest waiting for us. There’s something just, well, dangerous about this place.”
Marge, however, finally did appear, sleepy but aware. “Oh, boy!” she said, looking at Mia. “They really do a job, don’t they? Hey, it doesn’t look so bad! Just wear the big earrings to set it all off.”
“What took you so long?” Joe asked. “I was beginning to get worried.”
“When I saw you hung up at the station, I took the time to do a little scouting of the land. It’s real oppressive. Can’t you feel it?”
He nodded. “You can cut it with a knife.”
“Even the forest’s ugly. The trees are starting to grow weird and twist around, and there are lots more ugly weeds.”
He stared emptily into the trees for a moment, then said, “It’s because the wood nymphs are sick. They can’t do their job properly. If this keeps up, they’ll eventually die, and the satyrs who husband the animals will turn wild and vicious.”
Now, how did he know that? Not by learning, but instinctively. And he felt it, the nausea from the trees.
Marge frowned, knowing how he knew what he did. “So maybe there really is such a thing as an evil wood. If this is the way it is just inside the country, and a country that’s only controlled by the bad guys, I’m not anxious at all to see their land.”
He nodded. “You watch it. There’s a lot of evil fairies ascendant in this land. Maybe as bad or worse than evil humans. And some of them can fly, too.”
“Uh-huh,” she responded, settling in for her sleep.
Mia looked around. “It is as if there is a great shadow on this land, darkening all that live within it,” she said. “Is that not what we are to try and lift?”
“Yeah, that’s the idea, but we’ve got a long way to go.”
Just a few miles farther on, though, came the second test. Someone had built an ersatz gate of logs across the road, and that someone was six of the meanest-looking guys he’d seen in a long time.
He came up to just in front of the gate and stopped. “What is this about?” he demanded to know.
Their leader, a big man, dressed in black jerkin and leather boots and carrying a crossbow under his arm stepped forward. Joe could swear he could count the fleas on the man.
“This here’s a tollgate,” he said in the light tone of a man who is totally in charge. “You got to pay a toll to go on.”
“I see. And you are with the government?”
Several of the men sniggered at that.
“Yeah, we collect for the guv,” the leader responded, and there was more sniggering.
“Uh-huh. And how much do you collect?”
“All we kin git,” one of the others said, chuckling evilly.
Joe slid off his horse in a casual way, at one and the same time shifting his swordbelt to the proper position.
“Now, why don’t I believe you?” Joe mused aloud, almost taunting.
“You can believe this, foreigner,” the leader responded. “There’s six of us and you got just you and the bitch.”
Mia slid off her horse to the other side, coolly reaching into a saddle pocket and picking up a small throwing knife, which she deftly palmed. Even this naked, without even the hair, it was possible to hide things if you just stood right and moved right.
Joe looked them over. The leader was fairly near; no problem. Three of the other five looked pretty relaxed; they would waste precious time bringing any kind of weapon to bear. The one with the loaded crossbow aimed straight at his chest was the immediate problem. He calculated position, trying to insure that he had the proper angle and that nothing else would be in the way. Mia had moved closer to the men but out of the line of fire and stood there kind of sexily, but tense.
“Six is a problem,” Joe admitted. “Five is much simpler. But, of course, you give me no choice. It is give you everything and live, or refuse and die.” He had his hand on the sword hilt now, and he could feel Irving’s anticipation, its energy, even sheathed, feel its power uniting his arm and its dwarf magic.
“That’s the choice.”
“I think I choose that you all die,” Joe responded, and the answer caught the leader off guard for a precious fraction of a second. Joe leaped and the great broadsword sang and sliced clean through the leader’s neck, sending his head, still with a bewildered look on its face, high in the air.
At the same moment, Mia smoothly threw the knife into the chest of the man with the cocked crossbow. He screamed and bent over and the bolt shot harmlessly into the ground several feet from anybody.
Reacting to a two-pronged attack, the remaining four split, three fanning out against Joe, swords drawn, while one, with a maniacal leer, came right at Mia. She waited patiently for him, then, at almost the last second, leaped and kicked him straight in the chest, sending him backward while she whirled and retained her balance. The man she’d struck was hurt badly, probably with crushed ribs, but he was getting to his feet. She ran at him and gave him a kick to the side of the head; then, spying the crossbow bolt in the ground, she reached down, pulled it out, and plunged it into the man’s neck.
Joe faced the trio, waiting for one to get brave enough to close.
“Come on, come on,” the big man invited them. “I haven’t got all day. I want to be in town by dark!”
“Big talk!” one snapped. “There’s—”
”Three of you now,” Joe finished. “We’re halfway done and I haven’t even had any fun yet. If you stay like this too much longer, my girl’s going to have an easy time plugging each of you in the back and I won’t even get to fight!”
There was a sound like a giant rubber band being sprung at high tension and the middle man screamed, then pitched over, a bolt in his back.
The other two backed up nervously. “Okay, Mister, okay! Call it off!” one of them cried. “No toll for you!”
“You don’t get off that easily,” he told them. “You insulted my girl. She doesn’t like anybody calling her a bitch but me. And I don’t like ragtag bandits.”
They both threw down their swords. Mia, who’d had enough time to reload and recock the bow, looked very disappointed.
“All right! All right! We give up! Just let us go!” one of them pleaded.
Joe sheathed his sword but called, “Mia, keep them covered. Shoot the first one who so much as scratches his fleas and I’ll have time to take the manhood from the other one!”
“Your wish is my command, Master,” she responded, never enjoying that line more than now.
Methodically, never taking his eyes completely off the pair, he rifled the headless corpse of the leader, coming up with two small bags. Straightening up, he quickly looked into them and found, as he’d expected, one had coins, the other gems. He turned to the pair. “Now, the first thing you are going to do is tear down that barricade,” he told them.