Chương 7: The Night of the Snipe Hunt

Cold sweat wasn't something a guinea pig was supposed to be able to do. But Fenwick was working on it as he watched the lizard run away. Nibbles had let him know how dangerous it was for the hero's zombie virus to get out. Zombies in Fenwick's world were a result of necrotic magic, not an escaped virus. Get bitten by a local zombie, and it could hurt you or even kill you, but you wouldn't rise as a zombie. Not so with the virus, and a potentially infected animal was getting away. Fenwick did not run.

Guinea pigs were not built for running; they are small with short legs. What he did was quickly climb back into the harness, buckle it using hands that were steadier than he felt, and look directly at the lit screen above the head of the hero.

"I need to get back," he said.

"Fast. Right now." He had never spoken directly to the screen, not like that. He had talked at it, around it, complained near it, occasionally addressed it in the third person while explaining to himself what it was probably trying to communicate. He had never told it something he needed. The screen was still for a moment. Then it flashed a thumbs-up. The dancing figures appeared purposeful, lined up along the path back toward the Order's grounds with a clarity Fenwick had not seen before. The hero's head turned.

His feet found the path. He moved. The system lit the path one step at a time. The hero followed it, feet finding each marker with the focus he usually reserved for beetles. Every second felt like an hour. Fenwick kept his eyes on the tree line, on the direction the lizard had gone, on the gap in the stones along the east wall it had been heading toward. It was small and fast and moving toward the only warmth it knew, and every step back to the barn was a step he wasn't taking after it.

They made it back in twelve minutes. Fenwick had never gotten the hero back to the barn in under twenty. He unbuckled the harness, dropped down, and got the hero through the barn door and pointed at his wall in under a minute. The screen settled into its evening quiet. Strange script began to fill the space above the hero's head. Fenwick paused at the door. He looked at the screen.

"Thank you," he said. The screen did not respond. It was already doing something else. He left at a pace that was not quite running. He remembered where the lizard had headed. It still ran like it was alive, which was both good and bad. Good that it might not be infected. Bad that if it was, it was well ahead of him at this point. He could not tell anyone why this mattered.

Not without explaining what the hero was, which meant explaining what the hero had done, which meant explaining why a zombie had been allowed to bite things in a supervised training environment and how one of those things had gotten away. That conversation ended in ways he did not want to examine. Cover story, then. Diseased animal. Health concern. Needed to be caught and contained. Routine. He needed help. The three people Fenwick found were not the three people he would have chosen.

Alfred had been in the Order for forty years and carried a staff he described as a walking aid and deployed as though it were a weapon in a war he was still fighting. He was near-sighted and wouldn't get corrective spells or lenses. This meant he spent a lot of time squinting and walking into doors. He was an expert in animal containment, or so he told everyone all the time. He was also on the way and had burlap sacks for catching animals.

Sister Marvella had been found returning from a lecture on bugs of the lettuce field. She had taken the cover story at face value for about four minutes. She was now on minute six, and the questions had not stopped. Buttons had been coming back from a frog hunting expedition at the lake. Extra credit was given for those who caught enough for the life class in school, and Buttons needed as much extra credit as he could get. Luckily, he arrived carrying a pond net borrowed without asking.

He was vibrating with a quality of excitement that suggested he had been waiting for exactly this kind of thing since joining the Order. He whispered to himself as they moved across the courtyard, a low running commentary Fenwick caught in pieces. Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

"— moving fast, probably cornered near the east wall, textbook containment situation —""It's a lizard," said Fenwick.

"Right," said Buttons.

"Right. A diseased lizard." Marvella glanced at Fenwick. He did not glance back. The kitchens were warm, full of hiding places, and smelled of bread from the evening bake. They moved through them in a line, which had been Alfred's suggestion and was the wrong formation for this, as Fenwick had pointed out twice. Alfred had explained the correct reasoning behind it at some length. The line persisted. The lizard was not in the kitchens.

The laundry had the advantage of warmth and the disadvantage of approximately forty places where a small, fast lizard could conceal itself among the hanging fabric. Buttons deployed the net into a sheet and extracted it empty. Alfred explained the correct technique for net deployment at some length when the lizard was seen moving through the room at the edge of their vision and exiting through a gap near the floor.

"I see it," said Marvella.

"Where?" said Fenwick.

"It just went outside. East side." A pause.

"Brother Fenwick."

"Yes."

"Diseased animals don't generally move with that kind of—""East side," said Fenwick.

"Let's go." As they reached the east side, they saw the tail of the lizard as it slipped into the herb garden. Obsesively tended to perfection by the Matron Pancakes, the garden contained rare and common herbs alike, used widely by both sides of the order, the arcane and the divine. Alfred went in after it. His voice continued from inside, explaining the correct formation to nobody in particular. Four minutes later, he emerged wearing most of the winter sage and a substantial portion of the late thyme.

The lizard emerged behind him and headed for the bread pantry. Alfred was still explaining what had happened when Fenwick pulled the pantry door shut behind them. The bread pantry was small, warm, and smelled of flour. Shelving on three sides. Bins along the back wall. A lizard behind the third bin from the left, gone completely still, its eyes open, its head at the wrong angle. Buttons pointed at it.

"It's dead."

"It's not dead," said Fenwick.

"It's not moving."

"It is not dead. We still need to catch it." He was already moving, and Marvella was moving with him, both of them coming around the bin from different angles. The lizard broke left. Marvella's hand came down on it from above, quick and certain. It bit her. Small lizard. The teeth barely broke the skin. She made a sound, more surprise than pain, and her grip held. It did not get a second attempt. Fenwick's paw came up.

The blunt end of the acorn mallet from his bag, twice, smashing the head in quickly and effectively. It surprised everyone — a diseased animal was studied, not killed. He put it in a burlap sack. He stood up. Marvella was looking at her hand. When she looked up at Fenwick, he was looking at her face, and something behind his eyes had gone very still. A stillness that meant the opposite of nothing happened. She noticed. She noticed immediately because she noticed everything.

"Brother Fenwick—""Come with me," he said.

"Now." She came with him. Alfred was mid-sentence when they came out.

"— correct positioning would have prevented the—""Alfred." Fenwick did not stop walking.

"Can you and Buttons verify the laundry is clear?"

"Well, strictly speaking, the correct procedure for verification would require—""Thank you, Alfred." He was already across the courtyard. Buttons watched them go, net still in hand. He turned to Alfred.

"Are they—""Now then," said Alfred.

"The laundry." Corwin's rooms were in the east hall, on the second floor, with a narrow door beside a window that had not closed properly for eleven years. Fenwick had knocked on it twice in his three years at the Order, both times for matters of documentation. He knocked on it now with a speed that had nothing to do with documentation. Corwin answered in a study robe. He was a small, gray-brown vole with bright black eyes and silver whiskers, who carried himself with surprising dignity.

His fur was soft but weathered, marked with pale streaks around the muzzle that suggested great age. A book still in his hand, ready to yell at whoever was disrupting his night. Fenwick stepped up and whispered in his ear. Corwin's expression changed. The anger drained along with some of the color in his face. He nodded once and looked past Fenwick at Marvella.

"Come in," he said. The Divine Cure was calm and procedural, taking about six minutes. Corwin worked without commentary. Marvella sat in the chair he had moved to the center of the room, looked at her hand, and said nothing. When it was finished, she looked at Fenwick.

"She's fine," said Corwin.

"Nothing to worry about." He looked at Fenwick when he said it, not at Marvella. They walked back across the dark courtyard without talking. The main building's windows were lit warmly. From somewhere on the far side of the grounds came Alfred's voice, still explaining something to Buttons with the patience of someone who expected to be listened to. Marvella looked at her hand.

"What was that lizard?" Fenwick carried the sack. It did not move.

"Better if you don't know," he said. She was quiet for a moment. She looked at the sack. Then at him.

"All right," she said. Behind them, Alfred's voice rose slightly, making a point about field protocol. Buttons, to his credit, was still listening. ⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── [System Private Log — Entry 23, Addendum] He came back later than usual tonight. He did not say anything when he came in. He sat at his desk for a while. Then he fed the letter into the fire and started a new one.