Thorne kept peering at me. “Have you been here all this time?”
I nodded and said, “Where else would we be?”
Thorne looked at Luc, who said, “ ’Tis true, my king. They never left here. ’Twas the grubbs come back, no doubt.”
“Hmm, I wonder,” said Thorne. There was a look in his eyes and a dangerous sound in his tone that made my skin turn cold.
“I want them searched,” he said, pointing at me and Delph.
“What are we looking for, my king?” said Luc.
Thorne roared, “I’ll know it when I see it, Luc. Just do it.”
Now I knew he had discovered the ring missing. I didn’t know about the book. Perhaps he hadn’t looked under his mattress. I put on my blankest expression and prayed to Steeples that Delph was able to do the same. I took a chance at glancing over at him and discovered that Delph had slumped back down and looked like he was asleep.
I was so proud of him!
We were searched and nothing was found. Of course they never thought to look in my canine’s mouth for the ring or under him for the book. Thorne was not pleased, I could tell. And neither was I, at least not entirely. Now I knew Thorne would believe there were traitors among his number. And the last thing I wanted was to bring peril to Luc and his family. As Thorne stalked off, Luc gave me a tremulous glance that only heightened my fear for him.
I reached out my hand and Harry Two obediently opened his mouth and allowed me to retrieve the ring. I wiped it off and put it on, careful to keep the three-hook side up so I wouldn’t vanish. Then I took the book back and looked down at it.
“An awful, terrible Wug,” said Delph solemnly.
“I know. But with this book, I think we have a chance to make sure he’s an ex-king, Delph.”
“How d’ya mean?”
“This is proof of the evil things he’s been doing to the ekos and gnomes.”
His features widened in understanding. “Right, we can give it to Luc and he can... he can use it to fire up the ekos like. There’s no way they’d remain loyal to Thorne after learning he’s been killing their own kind like that.”
“But first we have to make sure that Thorne can never attack Wormwood.”
“This has to end soon, Vega Jane,” said Delph. “He knows we’re up to something. We’ll never get another chance.”
“It will end soon, Delph. It will end next light in fact.”
Delph looked at the ring.
“There’s a lot more to your grandfather than we thought,” he said.
“I think there’s a lot more to everything than we thought,” I said back.
And I did not mean this in a good way.
Undecim: Gone
The next light found us outside for another go at flying Thorne around.
As I readied for our flight, he looked at my arm.
“Cut yourself, did you?” he said pointedly.
I shot a glance at where he was pointing. There was blood on my sleeve from where the stone fragment blasted off by the morta shot had hit me.
“I caught it on a jag of rock.”
He gave me a dismissive look and stared up at the sky, which was quickly turning dark and foreboding. “Looks like a storm is coming. Shall we get on?”
When I started to strap Thorne into the harness, he shook his head.
“Positions reversed this time, my dear. I shall carry you.”
Since I had no choice I allowed him to harness me up and then we kicked off and sailed upward.
The ride up was bumpy as the winds pummeled us. We quickly became soaked as the rain began pelting down. I was glad of my goggles. A skylight spear shot sideways above us and the accompanying thunder-thrust was nearly deafening. I felt Thorne tense above me. It seemed the bloke was scared of a bit of rain and noise.
“Everything okay, O mighty king?” I asked snidely.
He didn’t answer. Instead, I felt him wriggling above me. I couldn’t tell at first what he was doing. But then it became quite clear as the harness started falling away from him. He had unbuckled it from around his torso. And since he was the only thing keeping me up, that presented a bit of a problem for me. A problem I solved by reaching back and grabbing Destin with one hand.
Unbalanced, we immediately went into a dive.
“Let go,” he roared, kicking at me.
“Not bloody likely,” I yelled back.
We swooped, barrel-rolled, somersaulted and plunged across the stormy skies.
He kept kicking at me and I kept parrying the blows.
Then I grew tired of that and drew back my fist and walloped him across the face. Blood from his nose spurted so fiercely that it splattered over both of us.
He looked down at me in shock. “You broke my damn nose.”
“Here’s another just for the Hel of it.”
I punched him again, giving him a black eye, and then I added a kick in his belly for good measure. I was a female, ’tis true, but I was tougher than just about any male of my acquaintance, including this git!
He gripped my hand with both of his and tried to peel my fingers from the chain. He managed to pry three away. So I turned to face him and wrapped my legs around his torso. With my legs supporting me, both my hands were free. And I used them to sound effect.
I struck Thorne over every part of his body I could reach. All the hatred, loathing, disgust and just sheer fury I had pent up for this bloke was finally unleashed. I was hurting him for every vile thing he’d done to us. For every ekos and gnome he’d cut up. For every grubb he’d killed. For murdering Murgatroyd. And simply for being the biggest, most evil prat I’d ever had the misfortune to meet.
After a dozen hits, I thought I had very nearly knocked him out. But there was more fight in the old Wug than I gave him credit for. I didn’t see the blow coming in time. His fist slammed against my face so hard I thought I felt all my teeth loosen. Thorne was old but he was big. Another blow to my face caused blood to fly from my nose and my face to puff up. I felt woozy and sick. But I was not about to let this git beat me. Thinking he had an advantage, he threw another blow, but I blocked it with my arm, the pain rattling up and down the limb. Then, keeping one leg wrapped around him so I wouldn’t plunge to the ground, I drew my other leg back and kneed him in a spot no male ever wanted to be hit. He groaned and went limp.
“Oh no!” I cried out.
Though I had won the fight with Thorne, our combined equilibrium had now been upset by his nearly being unconscious. We fell into a steep dive. I bent my head back and looked down. The only thing I could see was a mass of tree canopies coming at us sickeningly fast.
Thorne must have seen this and roused himself. “You’re going to kill us both,” he screamed between the gap in his teeth I had caused by knocking a front one out.
“Well, you were trying to kill me,” I shouted right back.
I spun us around so that I was on top. I gripped Destin with both hands, like the reins on a slep, and arched my neck and shoulders. Foot by foot we started to point up. As we finally soared upward, my boots brushed the tops of the tree canopy.
Then a skylight spear and accompanying thunder-thrust struck so close that it jarred me loose from Thorne. He seized on this opportunity by grabbing me by the hair with both hands and ripping me away from him. Then he let go, which was perfectly fine with me because unbeknownst to him I had slipped Destin from around his waist while he was mauling me.
I secured Destin around my waist and looked up just in time to see Thorne falling like a boulder.
The mighty king was screaming like a frightened baby Wug.
“Help me, Vega!” he screamed.