Night had fallen when no one was looking. The many peaks of Vhittering House were now lost amidst the ink; their proud outlines sketched in glimmering silver by a full moon. Colour had all but left the stable, the grounds that were once dazzling green, and the white stone pillars and black slate of the road leading downward. Even Eryn, who stood by her nag in the courtyard, tugging at saddle-straps with icy hands was as dark as shadow, and would have been lost to the dark if it weren’t for the glaze of moonlight on her jerkin, or the frozen flame that was her hair.

Her meeting with the changeling had left her in a foul mood. In the silence of the courtyard she dwelled on every word. Every shriek. “One like a crook” its screeching voice repeated in the very depths of her mind. What did it mean? Was it a clue? Was there a former criminal at the viscount’s employ? She ought to have asked. Perhaps she still had time…

A sound like a branch snapping struck her ear and she looked up. Her hands slipped away from the straps slowly – steadily. One found the hilt of her blade sheathed at her waist.

Another sound. Something else this time. A stone skipping along the road. Perhaps it was nothing, she thought. Perhaps the wind. Perhaps it had been kicked accidentally. She shut her eyes and listened; not daring to turn; not daring to move.

Nothing. Not a breath. She let her own go, and relaxed her grip – but did not yet let go. Something irked her. Something in the courtyard was different. The air? Thicker, perhaps. Hotter. The wind was certainly slower, quieter. They were no longer alone.

It was then she heard it. A sound like no other. A boot against the rough ground. It was unmistakable. Eryn sighed and stepped back from the horse’s side. She cracked her back and swivelled both wrists before moving on to her neck. She muttered something under her breath as she did. An incantation in a long dead language.

‘Awfully late for a pretty lass like you to be out the ‘ouse, eh?’ said a voice. Eryn, with her eyes shut tight and her back turned, couldn’t yet see the speaker, but could guess what he looked like. He was tall and reasonably burly, though with a considerable cut of his meat about the waist rather than anywhere flattering. His head was bearded and bald, and burned or scarred in several places – though none of these marks made him any uglier, as without them, he was already as ugly as a man could be. He walked with a crooked gait, as evident by his shuffling, and held tight to his shoulder a large club.

‘Careful, Tuck,’ said a second voice through a grin. ‘Don’t be gettin’ too close now. She’s a famous warrior!’

‘Oooh,’ said the first man. ‘Well I ‘aven’t never fought me a celebrity before, lads! Say… I wonder how much we’d get for ‘er ‘ead?’

‘Depends where you sold it,’ said Eryn. ‘The right place? You’d get a few thousand. The wrong place…? You’d get your own cocks for dinner and your testicles for dessert.’

‘Well then… We best make sure to sell it at the first. Could do with pickin’ up a few thousand, me,’ said the first man. ‘And I will, lass. I will.’

She was surrounded. She knew it by the sharp rattle of breath at every turn, the creak of leather, and the whirr of exposed steel. Eight? Nine, perhaps?

‘Do you know why my head is worth thousands, and yours is worth squat, Tuck?’ said Eryn.

‘Wh- How’d you know my name?’ asked the slack-jawed Tuck.

‘It’s because mine is an awful lot harder to remove.’

There was a sound like a shower of firecrackers exploding as the witch whipped around. Her blade rattled from its sheath and cut in a fluid arc through the open air. As it sailed it struck something hard and warm. Blood burst from severed arteries as the blade whirred and sliced through not one but two legs. Then an arm. And another.

Tuck dived backward, avoiding a deft blow and countered. Swinging his enormous club, he forced the witch to duck, and pirouette. She thrust sharply with her blade toward him, but fell short.

Another thug, armed with a mace, missed her by an inch, but swung again. Eryn felt her rib shatter as the mace landed. She backed away, gripping her side and grinning. The spell she’d cast then worked its magic. The mace-wielder’s arm became rigid and shot outward as the mace began to glow white-hot as though molten. Unable to let go, the thug began to convulse and whine as the heat spread to his hand and higher. He fainted as his arm exploded at the wrist.

The courtyard was alive with the sound of screaming men – armless or legless in the dirt – and panting; but the battle was not yet over. She caught the low whistle of a flail behind her, and the soft whirr of a sword to her right. Her mouth was moving, but none caught the words.

Wailing cries filled the air as radiant beams of silver scattered with supersonic speed and were retracted – returning en masse to the witch’s sword. Where they had struck great bleeding gashes and holes had been carved into her prey. Bodies writhed at her feet. Limbs twitched. Blood ran like a river.

Eryn held still a moment. Her sword hung in the air like a scorpion’s tale – poised to strike. Blood ran down her face; dripping from her chin. Her pulse thundered in her ears.

She looked around at the fallen mercenaries. A great sea of meat and bone was no longer moving. The men were in pieces, or preserved and pale as fallen statues. Only one still stood. The one she’d meant to save until last.

‘You fuckin’ bitch!’ screamed Tuck, darting toward her. He raised the club with shaking arms and swung.

Eryn turned her hand. The blow deflected. With a roar, Tuck swung again – this time overhead. Again, Eryn followed the swing, twisting her wrist to match the grain. The club rattled along her blade for a second time.

Soaked in sweat, and puffing like a hound, Tuck turned back to the witch, ready to mount another attack. But Eryn was already on him. Like lightning she moved, striking the man’s knee in a precise jab. He buckled and was sent careening to his knees with a crash. Something in his leg snapped as his other knee struck the slate.

The onslaught was not over. Tuck shielded himself with the club, throwing it over his head. He was fast, but the witch was faster. Her blade slid beneath the wood at a startling pace; the razor’s tip striking him in the eye.

Tuck dropped the heavy club and cried out – but was silenced. A broad horizontal slash carved a clean line through his throat and tore from his shoulders, his worthless head.

It hit the ground with a dull thump, and rolled a fair ways leaving a slick stream of crimson in its wake.

The scene fell quiet. What once writhed and whimpered had grown cold too, and now all that moved in the courtyard was the river of blood. The river ran calmly down into the road. A sheen of cold silver at its edge.

Eryn straightened up, and returned her worn sword to its scabbard with a gargling rattle.

‘Her in heaven!’ called a familiar voice from a high window. ‘Are you alri- Good god, the stench!’ Werner, who was leaning through an opening a storey up, plugged his nose and grimaced. ‘The servants won’t thank you for this ungodly mess, Eryn, I can promise you that! Couldn’t you have dispatched them a little more cleanly?’

Eryn shrugged.

‘Away from there, Werner!’ cried another voice. The viscount, Rangogh, no doubt. ‘If this thing bolts for the window it might very well take you out with it!’

Werner left the window wide and vanished into the room. Silence fell again as the witch waited by her horse, brushing dust and fouler things from her trousers. Soft mulch. Warm things that were tougher than blood but not dry like stone, clung to her hands as she cleaned herself. It was times like these that she wished that gloves did not dull her casting… 

‘Argh!’ cried Rangogh suddenly. Eryn looked up. A cloud of noxious green burst forth from the window. Soot and ash intermingled with something rarer – wilder. She heaved herself high and waited in the saddle, but the creature did not come.

A hand stretched out of the smoke and gripped the window ledge. Then, a face, blackened and streaming with tears cut through the cloud. Werner was in the window again, gasping for breath.

‘It’s g-gone…’ he sputtered. ‘Go! Go!’

‘Gone where?’ asked Eryn, perplexed. ‘Nothing has come this way?’

‘Gone up… U-up the chim… chimney!’ Werner spat in a hoarse croak. ‘Go! Go now!’

Eryn roared and twanged the reins. At once, her horse tore out of the courtyard, along the slate, until the slate became cobbles and the mighty house fell away behind them. She was not sure where she was headed yet, but knew if the monster had truly fled, she’d only fall further behind by looking.

A loud fizzing sound struck her ears – and likely the ears of the whole sleeping town as she galloped along the road. Looking up, she caught a quick flash of her prey. Soaring like a jet of fire – an enormous shooting star among the many silver specs above – the changeling went. Tiny wings, more like those of a beetle rather than a bird, had exploded from its scaly back, and now carried it far, far and fast through the night air.

Eryn tugged on the reins. Pivoting slightly, she shot off along a connecting road, to catch-up to the thing. It was perhaps a poor choice, as here the road was narrower, and took sharper turns. Turns that her horse were not accustomed to taking at speed.

The changeling was on the horizon now. A bright spark vanishing with every breath. Eryn thundered on. Together they bounded over hedges, packed stalls and even crashed through a rickety fence. Her eyes were locked to the spark.

Her horse rounded another bend and slid. Eryn gripped tight, clenching every muscle. The horse’s legs did not buckle, its feet catch on the cobbles, or its head strike the stones of the near wall. It avoided them all, miraculously – but Eryn was not so lucky.

A splitting crack rang out in the alley as her skull struck the bricks. There was a shower of white dust and from somewhere else, a short spurt of black, oily blood. Eryn felt her legs leave the saddle – then, she hit the ground with a resounding crash.

The powdered rock swirled like flour about her as she righted herself, and felt for the fresh gash on the side of her head. It stung painfully as her coarse finger scraped by. She glanced at her hand and found it stained black.

She cursed the air and spat – a dozen foul expletives ran from her mouth in all manner of tongues and dialects: Elvish, orkish, trollspeech and even a form of common speech familiar to only fisherman off the Lythan coast.

The horse was long gone. There was no chasing after it. Bleeding mare, thought Eryn, dusting herself off. Probably doesn’t even realise I’m no longer riding it. She felt the cut in her hair once more, and winced. She looked up at the place on the wall where she’d struck. High up, a wide explosion of black oil now painted the chalky brick like a great spider squashed flat. She gazed at the mark and grinned. It was then an idea struck her.

The changeling was too fast to follow. Even on horseback the monster had moved like a loosed arrow. It was foolish to try. But perhaps, the thing itself wasn’t the only thing she could chase.

Slowly she stretched out a hand and closed her eyes. The wind, the pain of her fall, the crash of fences far off (what was unmistakably her horse still ploughing ahead without her) – all things washed over her like a soft tide. She felt numb. Numbing further with every breath. Then, another sound. Fizzing. This one was louder. Clearer. She focussed on it. Let it overcome the rest. It was the same sound that she’d heard mere moments ago. The roar of the changeling through the air. The flame. The heat. The air snapped at its fiery trail. Smoke jettisoned from behind and dissipated quickly… or did it? Must it? 

She opened her eyes and smiled. There it was. The trail hung like a peculiar cloud overhead. It must have been a mile in length or more. Shooting from the house atop the hill up and up over her head, to be lost again behind the rows of houses. A perfect score through the night sky. It jerked here and there as though attempting to fade – to fizzle – but was corrected by something stronger. Something wild.

Eryn took off into a jog – a jog that became a run, and a run, a sprint. Soon she left the towering homes behind; the stacked and squashed-together, sleeping houses. They vanished behind her to be replaced by green grass and the wider, flatter structures of farmland. On and on she ran beneath the frozen smoke-trail, until finally the line came to an end above an old and tired-looking barn.

The roof was badly damaged. Whatever had crashed into it – and judging by the smoke’s sudden end, Eryn felt confident she knew – had left a gaping chasm in the thatch. Some frayed ends still glowed like the embers of a fading campfire.

The door sprung wide at her touch as though it was eager to open for her. The hinges were well-worn and must have been recently re-oiled, though, inside, she found little evidence of the barn being used at all – at least, in an agricultural capacity.

Hay was strewn haphazardly about as though a tornado had torn through, and each twig was damp and near-rotten. The rest of the barn was empty, save for a few rusted tools which sat inside broken buckets or leaned against ancient crates riddled with mites.

A rustling in a far corner caught her ear. Eryn’s hand snapped to her sword as a dark shape stumbled forward from the shadows.

‘Show yourself, monster,’ she growled. ‘Or die where you stand.’

The thing lumbered closer. It was hunched and walked like a man, though with a trembling, queer gait. It was carrying something in both mighty mitts. Something that, all of a sudden, let out a soft, childish giggle.

Light which poured through the punctured roof struck the thing as it stepped forward. It was none other than the hunchback boy.

“One like a crook” she recalled, painfully. Crooked. Of course.

The boy no longer blushed at the sight of Eryn. Pale white and shivering, he was clearly terrified, and attempted to mumble something, but the sound was inarticulate and sloppy. More like a long drone than a sentence. He opened wide his crooked mouth and revealed to the witch his few rotted teeth, and more pressingly, his lack of tongue. It was not a new injury. By the bluntness of the muscle left, he had been mute for many years. ‘You’re the agent in Vhittering House,’ said Eryn, loosening her grip on the hilt. ‘You helped the changeling install itself. But why? What have you to gain? You wanted coin for thugs, and the viscount’s granddaughter?’

She stared at the boy as though waiting for an answer to any of her questions – but of course, none came. Again the hunchback boy opened his mouth to reveal his grisly amputation.

Eryn sighed. ‘Yes, I know. You’re mute… Is that the girl? Dalia?’ she added, pointing to the infant wriggling in the hunchback’s arms. The hunchback nodded glumly, and with a look of severe guilt, held the girl out to Eryn.

Eryn took her at once – though she knew not exactly how. She wrapped her arms awkwardly about the girl and clung on as if singularly focussed on one thing. Do not drop her, she barked again and again in her mind.

The girl was wrapped in an expensive cotton blanket, but it had been marred with dirt and grime. What filth hadn’t stopped at the blanket also coated her skin. Every inch of her was grey as though she’d rolled herself in the mud for an hour. She stunk of wet straw and dung, and very sweetly beneath it all, of lilac.

Many questions plagued Eryn. Too many to count. What had the hunchback boy to do with any of it? Had it all been his idea? A mad reach for power, perhaps? And where was the changeling? It had certainly come through the roof, but there was nothing more stirring in the barn that she could see. What was the point of it all?

She gazed down at the infant girl with a tumultuous expression. The girl, Dalia, looked up at her and smiled serenely. There was a certain awe in her eyes as she beheld the battered and bloody witch that held her. It was impossible to tell what she was thinking, and yet her smile spoke volumes.

The infant did not take after her grandfather in the slightest. Two enormous eyes shone like dazzling blue moons. There was a great deal of joy in them. Joy and innocence. It discomforted Eryn to look in them. To see herself reflected in them. She was beautiful, despite the dirt. Beautiful and so very delicate. If you were mine, thought Eryn, I’d be petrified with fear. Too terrified to leave you. And yet, it makes no difference. One day the innocence will leave you. It will be stamped out. That terrifies me.

There was a sudden scraping at her back and the witch turned sharply about. The barn door was open again, and striding in was a stranger to Eryn. A stranger in polished leather boots, and a fashionable blue cap with a feather. The feather bobbed comically far behind him as he came to a halt on the hay. He snapped his fingers once, and Eryn felt the tremor of the wood underfoot as the hunchback hobbled past her to the man’s side.

‘Unfortunately, my dear friend, it appears I have arrived rather late,’ the stranger said, looking at Eryn, and then to the child. ‘Go and wait by the horses, Bherman. You have done admirably, but I expect I shall have to take it from here.’

The hunchback boy bowed low enough to touch the deck with his chin, before scarpering through the open barn door. It shuddered noisily as it closed behind him.

‘It seems destiny has brought us here together, Eryn of Koss.’ The stranger spoke as though channelling a cool breeze directly through his teeth. It was a strong and yet soft sound. ‘I am familiar with your name – and your work.’

‘Then you have me at a disadvantage,’ she replied. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘My name is Arún of Berchmuld.’ He struck his chest with a closed fist and bowed, though only shallowly. It was a traditional military greeting that Eryn had been offered many times, though never reciprocated. This time was no different. ‘When I first heard that drunk Rangogh had gotten a witch involved I have to say I was troubled…’ Arún went on, not deterred in the slightest by her flagrant disrespect. ‘But when I learned it was you, I became rather more intrigued than worried, to tell you the truth.’

Eryn raised an eyebrow. ‘You see,’ Arún continued. ‘Since I was a young lad, I have always been a staunch admirer of your famous talents. I know every story off-by-heart. The witches of blustering crag. The troll-tenant. Farewell to summer. Every word of them.’

‘Glad to meet a fan,’ said Eryn in an icy tone. She pulled the infant Dalia closer to her breast.

‘Indeed. And as such a scholar of your past – your accomplishments and failings – I am quite certain that I will be able to overcome you.’ His face fell into a frown as his hand slid up to meet the hilt of his sheathed blade.

‘Is that so?’ said Eryn. The hay about them began to snap angrily as though it were filled with vipers. The boards underfoot groaned and wobbled. ‘I would certainly advise against it… but if you’re sure?’

Eryn stepped forward, a shock of air blowing from her boot. Hay rose up and fell in a great wave around them.

Dalia gave a sudden chuckle. Stretching out a tiny hand, she reached for a stick of falling hay. She missed, but giggled louder with each failed attempt.

Arún’s frown softened. ‘Alas. It seems my heart is not in it after all,’ he said, relaxing his grip. ‘This is truly an awful crowd for a bloody duel, wouldn’t you agree, Eryn?’ He smiled and looked down at the girl in her arms. Then, sighing, let his glove slip away from the hilt altogether.

‘Pity,’ said Eryn. ‘I was quite looking forward to that. But I do agree. I suppose the scrape with your goons up at the house will have to remain an empty meal of its own – rather than the appetizer it could have been.’

‘Eloquent,’ said Arún. ‘Well, I can’t imagine you’ll allow me to dissuade you from returning my niece to her grandfather, so I will resort to a rather more unexciting backup plan for gaining custody of her. One that doesn’t involve violence. I will follow your horse, if you don’t mind.’ He extended an arm toward the door. ‘After you…’

There was an abrupt rustle of hay at the witch’s back. A sound so quick and substantial, that it could not have been anything but deliberate. Eryn turned and witnessed the hay toss into the air behind a toppled bucket. Something had had enough of hiding, it seemed. Something, and she knew exactly what, had had its fill of suffocating, wet sticks of old hay.

Eryn passed the bucket. Shifting Dalia into the crook of one arm, she plunged the other deep into the thick hay-pile. A second later she tore from it a squealing, screeching, furious thing. A thing that looked like a child – and a monster. Grey-skinned and scaly, and with hideous fangs that chattered and through which it spat and sprayed like a faulty watering can.

‘My, my, aren’t you simply filthy,’ she said, peering at the thing’s wailing mug as it hung upside-down from where she held it at the ankle. ‘Not to worry. I’m sure they’ll run you a nice bath once we’re back home, little one.’

The changeling stopped wailing, and raised an eyebrow.

Eryn looked around and spied an old potato sack. With a deft flick of her wrist, she tossed the imp into the sack and, before it could scuttle free, snaked her free hand about the opening, drawing it shut.

‘Leave the poor bugger here,’ said Arún. ‘What could you possibly want with it? A snack for the road, perhaps?’ A soft moan of terror burst from the sack in Eryn’s hand.