Only Jonty and one other Red Cap stayed back with me, though every Red Cap who had come out tonight - a dozen of them - had touched me before they went to take their place in the ranks. They had laid their mouths, in a strange sort of kiss, against my shoulder where the coat hung heavy with blood from Jonty's cap. One had caught the coat in his pointed teeth and torn it before Jonty had slapped him away. The ones who came after had widened the hole until the lips of the last few touched my bare shoulder where the blood had begun to dry to my skin. I had neither offered the Red Caps the familiarity, nor been asked; Jonty had called them, and spoken in a Gaelic so old that I could not follow it.
Whatever Jonty had said to them had turned their faces to me, and the look in their eyes was that odd mix of sex, hunger, and eagerness that I'd seen in Holly. I hadn't understood the look - and hadn't had time to question it - but because it cost me nothing to have their lips pressed to my shoulder, I allowed it. Then I noticed that each of the Red Caps who touched me began bleeding afresh after touching Jonty's blood on my body.
I was fighting an urge to scream my impatience at them, but the Red Caps weren't the ones delaying; the other goblins squabbled about who would go where. If Kurag, Goblin King, had come, there would have been no arguments, but Ash and Holly, though feared warriors, were not kings, and all other leadership among the goblins is a constant state of struggle. The goblin society represented the ultimate in Darwinian evolution: only the strongest survive, and only the very strongest lead.
If I had been truly queen enough to lead them, they would have done what I ordered, but I didn't have their respect yet, so I knew better than to try to lead here. It would have undermined Ash and Holly, and gained me nothing. Besides, battlefield tactics wasn't my strongest suit, and I knew that. My father had drilled into me from an early age to know my strengths and weaknesses. Find allies who complement you, he'd said. True friendship is a type of love, and all love has power.
Jonty leaned over me and said, "Call your hand of power, Princess."
"How do you know they are hurt?"
"We are goblins," he said, as if that settled it.
Another line of green flame flickered through the trees, and I was close enough now to see the black tendrils back away from it. I didn't argue again, but called the hand of blood.
I concentrated on my left hand. It didn't emit a beam of power, or anything like you see in the movies; it was simply that the mark, or key, to the hand of blood lay in the palm of my left hand. Or maybe doorway was a better term. I opened the mark in the palm of that hand, and though there was nothing to see with the na**d eye, there was plenty to feel.
It was as if the blood in my veins had suddenly turned to molten metal. My blood tried to boil with the power of it. I screamed, and thrust my hand toward the cloud. I projected that burning, tearing power outward. I realized in that moment that it wasn't just the archers who were shooting blind - I had never before tried to use the hand of blood on a target I could not see.
For a heartbeat the power turned back on me, and every small scrape I'd accumulated in the past twenty-four hours bled. Each tiny wound bled like a fountain, and I fought my body, fought my own magic to keep it from destroying me.
Lightning struck the cloud, and illuminated it, as it had inside the sluagh's mound. But I wasn't horrified this time, I was joyous; a fierce triumphant joy. If I could see it, I could make it bleed.
I had the blink of an eye to spot my targets. A breath to see that the tentacled mass was white and silver and gold, not the black and grey and white it had been. I had an instant to note that the hunt had a terrible beauty before I thrust my power toward that shining mass and screamed, "Bleed!"
Green flame climbed up the trees and lightning flared behind it so that both powers met mine in the cloud at the same instant. The cloud flashed green in reflected color. I called for blood and black fountains of it exploded into the green-yellow flare.
The light died, leaving the night blacker than before. My night vision had been ruined from staring into the light. Something spattered against the left side of my face, something that felt wet, but carried no shock of temperature difference. Only two things feel like that: water at body temperature, and very fresh blood. If I had been a warrior, I would have whirled, gun up, but I turned slowly, like a character in a horror movie who doesn't really want to see the blow before it falls.
All that met my eyes was the shortest of my Red Cap guards, Bithek. Someone had sliced open his scalp to spill blood in a gory mask down his face, so that even his eyes were lost to the dark flow of it. Then he shook his head like a wet dog, spattering me with warm drops. I closed my eyes, put up a protecting hand.
Jonty's chided Bithek. "You're wasting the blood."
"But so much, can't keep it out of my eyes. I'd forgotten that it was ever like this," Bithek growled.
I looked behind me at Jonty and found him as bloody as the other guard. It made me look around at all of them. They were all covered in blood, but even by moonlight and starlight, I could see now that the blood welled from the caps on their heads.
"Your magic brings our blood, Princess," Jonty said.
"I don't understand..."
"Make them bleed for us," the last Red Cap said.
I looked at him. "I can't remember your name," I said.
"For this magic, I would follow you nameless, Princess Meredith. Bleed our enemies, and cover us in their blood."
I turned away from the Red Caps. I didn't understand completely, but trusted. One mystery at a time - later, later I would unravel it all.
Even facing away from the Red Caps, I could still feel them. It was as if their power complemented mine, fed it. No; our powers fed each other; they were like a warm battery at my back, comforting, energizing.