Faormuc, J.B. Jones [which ebook reader txt] 📗

and graceless, each footstomp raising dust. Though she was angry beyond any recollection, the first cracks of tension creased the corners of Michaela's mouth.

 

The faormuc heard the low frequency thumps and felt their vibration. With patience and interest, the animal watched as Michaela challenged the men.  It voted its assessment of her ability to intimidate with another derisive sneeze.

 

an would ye be after fetchin you own food and what do I call you and would you please please bring my mate

 

The  cat-being turned intelligent eyes to Michaela and dabbed at some of the slobber leaking from its mouth with a paw.  It turned away to give the dampened paw a vigorous shake.  Tiny droplets sat like translucent coins upon some of the nearer leaves.  During the space of several breaths the leaves began to brown and curl. 

 

Rising into an exaggerated hump and then a languid stretch once more revealing all of its claws, the faormuc approached the stalled party. The animal turned its raised tail to the boy in front and sprayed. The pungent cloud spread, dividing the men from the woman it guarded. 

 

Showing confident nonchalance, the faormuc looked over its shoulder then turned to fasten orchid-bright violet eyes onto the Royal and his men. The animal melted into a feral crouch. A threatful grating noise that no cat had ever made, gravel in avalanche, rumbled from deep within the creature.  Its lips drew back hard enough to furrow the flesh beneath flared nostrils, unsheathing the impressive fangs. The faormuc drooled as it waited.

 

The youngster's horse sprayed snorts of challenge as it pranced and pawed at the soil. His attention wrested from the threatening cat, the young Royal took advantage of his mount's activity by surrendering half a pace as he feigned difficulty in regaining control.

 

Message delivered, the faormuc returned to lie in the sun-warmed soil at Michaela's feet.

 

ohhh  I see  perhaps we might allow Colryn to arrive when he will

 

The horses of the three men behind the colorful rider shied and whinnied as they sensed pheromones alien and threatening.  The lead horse belched a number of forceful snorts. Tossing its great head, the warhorse sneezed a sloppy cloud of spray.  It took back the half pace and did not yield its ground.

 

"Now, see here, young woman," said the gaudy horseman. 

 

From some nook or cranny he withdrew a hankie which the porky Heir held to his nose for several deep inhalations, then blotted his brow with it.  Can this wench not see?  I am to be a King! 

 

He looked to his men as they wrestled their nervous mounts into some semblance of control.  A variety of thoughts and feelings painted the faces of the three horsemen. He recognized tension, concern and a host of others. None of those were confidence in the cocky Royal's ability. The presumptive Heir squared his shoulders. This ends now.  Three armed Faustians and their Lord-to-be will not be cowed by a stripling female and her kitty.

 

Irritation mutating into anger, The Heir to the Royal Throne barked, "You WILL accord me my due." 

 

His royal recriminations went no further.

 

  The faormuc charged the riders. Within two paces the full fury and elegance of the predator displayed.  It covered the seven human strides in four of its own, tail extended for balance and ebony lips skinned back from shiny wet teeth.  As the assault of the monster reached its third pace and it wailed a feline war cry, one of the horses at the back of the group reacted to the threat and turned away. It whinnied with equine terror and bucked. The horse reared and the man on it grabbed the saddle pommel.  He cursed his mount and tried not to be thrown.

 

Before reaching the barrier of musk separating predator from prey, the beast aborted the assault, tucking its hind legs under and scratching to a stop. Clods of dirt and dust spewed ahead of it. Across the boundary, the lead horse stomped its forehooves into the churned dirt. Chiseled hind legs bunched beneath it as the warhorse prepared to lunge into combat.

 

The pudgy boy in dusty and colorful clothing was jostled, close to unseated himself by his horse's reaction to the headlong charge of the nerve fraying beast. He dropped the handkerchief and it fluttered to the ground. The royal arrogance frightened out of him, at last, he trembled in the saddle. The faormuc favored the whelp with a ferocious scowl and sauntered away.  The disturbed child's horse stamped the scented kerchief into the soil of the abused farm plot. 

 

Moving his gaze onto the spot where the nightmare cat had seeped into the concealment of the undergrowth, the young Royal gathered his wits and spoke with a congenial tone he hoped the strange creature might not object to.

 

 "Young, er, Citizen?  Yes.  Citizen, I should think."  He looked back to Michaela, straightened his posture and proclaimed, "I am Crown Prince Italo, Heir to the Royal Thr..."

 

*****

 She laughed at him.  Her mirth rang out in bright jagged peals that savaged what patience and restraint remained to the Prince. The Prince's face darkened and his sneering lips paled to invisibility.  Eyes the color of the mud his party had made of the farm patch narrowed and splotches shaded a vitriolic scarlet rose high on acned cheeks.

 

"A Royal, are ye?"

 

She delivered a mock curtsey with all the aplomb a Lady of the Court might have shown.  One slim leg swept to the side to point dirty toes while Michaela bent at the knee and with a delicate flow of skinny, dirt-smeared arms she bowed low in an exaggerated parody of respectful grace.

 

 "Oh, do forgive me my brashness, Your Highness," she said with all the gravitas of a penitent sniveling at the feet of her betters.

 

Michaela then collapsed into the soil of her vegetable garden and a fit of laughter severe enough to spawn hiccups took her.  She wrapped her dirty arms around her waist, howling gales of amusement. Her hands clutched at filthy clothes and dollops of tears the no-color of crystal slid down her cheeks.

 

"Take her!"

 

*****

"Michaela, GO!"

 

The shout cut through Michaela's sudden shock at the Prince's order to his men.  She scrambled on hands and knees away from the man that dismounted to carry out his command.  Power from she knew not where energized her frantic attempt to escape.  She launched into a terror laced run.  Heaving away from the attacker's grip on her soiled and flimsy blouse, Michaela left him with a ragged swatch in his hand as she fled.

 

Her pursuer was cut off as the rider proclaiming Royalty kicked his steed into the chase.  She turned to look over her shoulder and tripped, rolling onto her backside and scuttling away as the horseman approached.  Michaela's heels kicked madly in the softened soil of the garden and she screamed her terror as the rider urged his horse into a rear that would end with the woman's crushed remains staining its hooves.

 

The boy's face bore an awful grimace of rage and triumph as he stood in the stirrups and leaned forward over the brawny horse's neck.  Strength failed her as she looked at that gaze, spiteful and petulant as any stripling denied just one more sweet, please, Mama.  Michaela sat in the dust, shocked to stillness, as the warhorse neighed a battle cry and the Prince howled a heart-speeding shout of his own.

 

Michaela cringed, her eyes squinched shut in the face of the doom she expected to befall her and so she was spared the sight of the arrow piercing first the left forearm of the young Prince and then ripping into the neck of the rearing brute beneath him.

 

Neither did she see the next projectile, though she heard it as it whisked past her to pin the dismounted man's  foot to the hoof-tossed ground.

 

Nor did Michaela see the faormuc's horrific attack, fastening those claws and fearsome teeth onto the genitals of the rearing warhorse.  With a guttural and jubilant snarl, it ripped them away from the horse's belly.  A flood of viscera and blood emptied from the incredible wound and the steed screamed almost as a human might.

 

The horse collapsed and its rider was thrown, breaking the arrow off and leaving only the distinctive feathering her husband used to craft his weapons sticking out of the boy-Prince's arm.

 

Horrible sounds pooled thick in the air around her. 

 

The worst of those, colors that spoke their own entrancing cacophony.  Michaela's eyes, and ears, sped from the stimulus of rich ruby blood that thrummed, to the trilling call of the pale green kerchief pounded into the dust.  The hue of the sky carrolled and the brown of gore-damped muck beneath the fallen warhorse groaned.

 

The dying horse bellowed labored breaths from its massive chest as it lay on the ground with its eyes rolling in shock and pain.  The animal kicked its legs in a useless gallop and whinnied in agony.  Michaela was unaware that her own tortured breaths rasped in time with those of the doomed mount.

 

Prince Italo howled his own pain from nearby, sickened amazement on the boy's face as he gaped at the yellow-fletched arrow remnant skewering his arm.

 

The first man to chase her shouted curses mixed with his piteous wails of pain as he plopped onto his rump, staring in surprise at the projectile impaling his foot.  The remaining two riders sat in gods-blessed silence, bolt upright in their saddles, hands out at their sides.

 

Michaela's own breath burst from her in a ragged pant.

 

"Kayla?"

 

She did not answer.  Pale and sweating, she shook as though in the grip of some grim and terrible ague.  She looked around with strained eyes incapable of making sense of her surroundings.

 

Her husband brushed his fingers into Michaela's hair.  She jolted and looked up with wild eyes and a startled cry. 

 

"Kayla, it is me.  'Tis alright, now."

 

With a mewl an abused kitten might have uttered, Michaela wrapped her arms around one of his strong thighs.  She felt the muscle flex against her cheek.  The worn smooth deerhide darkened with those tears that leaked from her closed eyes. Michaela's chest rose and fell with shuddering gasps as she cried.

 

Her husband cradled Michaela's head with one large hand, his thumb moving in a gentle and soothing rhythm that in no way matched the anger and malice in his voice as he motioned to the two sitting their saddles.

 

"Jonsai, get those things off their horses.  Marku, skewer the first to balk."

 

"Aye, Col," answered Jonsai.  Turning to the mounted pair, he drew a knife as long as his forearm, it might have been mistaken for a short sword, save for the grip fashioned from the bone of a large animal.  "On the ground, you curs."  He drove the knife point downward in theatrical emphasis. 

 

Oh, good on you, Jon! 

 

"And you shall do so with the utmost caution attainable by those such as yourselves."

 

The horsemen paused their dismounts to look first at one another, then at the man with the big knife and the formal diction.  They hurried off their horses when they realized they had earned the focused and belligerent attention of the bearded man with the crossbow.   The pair resumed submissive postures on their own feet.  They were astonished when the crossbowman let loose a gruff cackle and, soto voce, "...you shall do so..." 

 

Jonsai stiffened then hazarded a fleet glance at Colryn.  He flushed when that glimpse revealed Colryn focused on him.  Jon pumped a warding gesture, with the hand not holding a sword, at Colryn,  "It is my unshakeable belief that this untidy situation is well enough..."  He trailed off as the smile that had peeked from the corner of the hunter's eye reached to tug the corner of Col's upper lip into a smirk. 

 

This is surreal.  These heathens laugh?   We have no time for this  - tho I am sure to be reminded of it soon.

 

Jonsai spat a sour, "I got this."  He went to gather the reins of the skittish horses.

 

Marku, crossbow fitted with a bolt and ready,  motioned the