Dawn Of The Dreadfuls Part 20

"You," the Master said again, "are... correct."

"She's what?" Lydia blurted out. She looked keenly disappointed that her sister wouldn't be joining her on the floor for a round of dand-baithaks.

Master Hawksworth strode over to his sheathed katana, took it down from the peg from which it hung, and began strapping it on. "Prepare yourselves. We go on patrol."

"On patrol?" Kitty said. "You mean as in... looking for zombies?"

The Master closed his eyes tightly for a second. It wasn't quite a flinch, but it was more than a blink.

Ahhh, Mary thought, a warrior and a gentleman.

"'Unmentionables,' Kitty," she chided. "Don't forget: A young lady doesn't use the Zed Word."

"Yes, well... should we get our swords so we can lop off more unmentionables' heads?" Lydia asked.

Master Hawksworth blink-flinched again. "Your swords, your maces, your throwing stars, your pikes. Whatever you prefer." He turned to Mary. "Your father tells me you've taken an interest in his flintlocks of late."

"Yes, Master! It's true, Master! I have, Master!"

"Bring one."

"Thank you, Master! I will, Master! The finest we have is a French dueling pistol. It's in the house, in my room. I've been sleeping with it, as you instructed we should with our favorites. I always start out with it under my pillow, yet many's the time I've awakened to find myself stroking it in my-"

"Yes, yes, fine," Master Hawksworth said. "Collect it and let us depart."

"Right away, Master!"

Mary was already flying out of the dojo when she realized Master Hawksworth had contradicted himself again: He usually had little use for firearms, and more than once he'd grumbled about the "contemptible weakness" of the young doctor who could rescue Elizabeth only with the aid of a flintlock pistol.

Normally, she would have filed this away to be brought to the Master's attention later. (Again, she wouldn't be questioning him but merely pointing out where his teachings might be made more uniform.) Outside, however, she found awaiting her such a surprise, even her well-honed ability to retain a failing for future comment was, for once, overthrown.

A dozen soldiers were loitering under an alder on the lawn, some sitting, some laughing, some smoking pipes. When they caught sight of Mary heading for the house, they fell silent, watching her with expressions that seemed either slyly insinuating or strangely pitying.

Mary was tempted to shoo them off the property as one might chase away a stray cat trying to make rude use of one's flower beds. It was hard to imagine how she might do this while maintaining her own ladylike grace, however, and she instead resolved to tell Capt. Cannon of the incident the next time she saw him. He seemed like such a dignified man, despite his less-than-dignified means of locomotion, and she couldn't imagine he'd approve of his troops loafing on decent citizens' lawns when they should be out hunting dreadfuls.

When Mary stepped inside the house, she found another surprise awaiting her: The usually industrious Mrs. Hill was sulking in a chair in the foyer.

"Tell me, Hill," Mary said, "were you aware that a group of soldiers was-"

"I don't know anything about anything!" the housekeeper cried, and she hopped to her feet and trundled off down the hall. "Or anyone! Not anymore!"

As Mary watched her disappear into the kitchen, too stunned to do more than gawp, she became aware of a voice droning away in the drawing room-a low, gravelly, indisputably male voice that was most certainly not her father's.

"Oh! Mark you yon pair, in the suns.h.i.+ne of youth," she heard it say as she moved closer, gliding silently ninja-style without even realizing she was doing so. "Love twin'd round their childhood his flow'rs as they grew. They flourish awhile, in the season of truth, till chill'd by the winter of Love's last adieu!"

It made no sense whatsoever to Mary, and she could but conclude it was the ravings of a madman.

"Sweet lady!" the voice went on. "Why thus doth a tear steal its way down a cheek which outrivals thy bosom in hue?"

Mary shrieked out her battle cry and burst through the door, certain that her mother was being menaced by a slavering reprobate.

And Mrs. Bennet was indeed in the drawing room-though it was Mary who shocked and unnerved her, not the three men huddled around her chaise longue: Cuthbert Cannon in his wheelbarrow, Left Limb on bended knee with a single rose in his hands, and Right Limb holding up a copy of something called Hours of Idleness so the captain could orate from its pages.

"Mary! My heavens, you give me palpitations!" Mrs. Bennet exclaimed, fluttering her hands over her chest. "Why must you come stomping in here like an Indian elephant?"

"I... I... I thought something was amiss."

"Amiss? Whatever could be amiss, child? Our friend Captain Cannon was simply paying a perfectly respectable afternoon call on your father and, since Mr. Bennet is elsewhere, paid his compliments to me instead and, as sometimes will happen when two people engage in harmless conversation long enough, the talk turned to literary matters, the captain being an enthusiast, it turns out, of fine English verse, and, having as he did a particularly superior volume upon his person, it was proposed that he favor me with a reading from it, which he was doing, quite innocently, when you came barging in to startle your poor, long-suffering mother into convulsions."

"I'm sorry, Mamma. And I apologize to you for my most uncouth intrusion, Captain. If I'd but known-"

"Well, now you know, so why don't you run along and leave us genteel people in peace?" Mrs. Bennet said. "I'm sure your master must have some new bit of savagery to teach you out in his hojo."

"Dojo, Mother. I apologize again, Captain. Good day."

Mary backed out of the room and closed the door. It didn't occur to her to wonder why one of the captain's Limbs should be holding a rose until she was halfway up the stairs, and by then her thoughts were already racing on to something infinitely more important: the need to get outside with her flintlock before Master Hawksworth grew displeased by her delay.

She found the Master and her sisters waiting out by the road. Kitty had her sword at her side and nunchucks strapped to her back; Lydia carried a staff, and throwing stars hung from bandoliers criss-crossing her chest. Master Hawksworth, to Mary's surprise, was holding one of her father's old crossbows, bolt loaded and bow string pulled back.

"I'm ready, Master," Mary said. "Where shall we begin our patrol?"

Master Hawksworth turned to the west. "That way."

Kitty and Lydia leered at each other.

He was taking them toward Netherfield Park.

The Master had the girls fan out and move ahead of him. "So that I might observe how you observe," he said. Accordingly, Mary did her utmost to radiate alertness, keeping her back straight and her head moving from side to side as she scanned the shaded bramble on each side of the road. Kitty did the same, matching Mary's slow, steady pace.

Lydia, on the other hand, kept pus.h.i.+ng out ahead of the others with a step so lively she was practically skipping.

"May I ask something, Master?" she said.

Mary heard Master Hawksworth blow out a long breath. She would've thought it a sigh from anyone else, but from the Master such a show of weariness and human weakness was out of the question. So he was just... exhaling. Heavily.

"If your question is about the deadly arts," he grated out, "you may ask it."

"Oh, it is." Lydia spun around and began walking backward, facing the Master. "Why have you brought us out on patrol today?"

"Lydia Bennet," Master Hawksworth began.

"I only ask," Lydia plowed on, "because it makes me think we've reached some new level of the deadly arts. Am I correct? Or is there another reason we left the dojo today? Other than the deadly arts, I mean."

"Lydia," Mary chided, "you're being disrespectful."

"No, she's not!" Kitty said. "She's merely asking a question about our proficiency in the deadly arts." She looked over at Lydia, and the two of them smirked at each other again in a way they perhaps fancied furtive. "You're wondering, as am I, whether this means we're equal to Jane and Elizabeth. In the deadly arts. After all, they've been allowed to venture out now and make use of their new skills, while we've only had a break from training in the dojo once, and then for all of two hours."

"In which time, we slew an unmentionable," Lydia pointed out.

"Exactly! It's not fair, letting Jane and Elizabeth run around with Lord Lumpley and Lieutenant Tindall and Doctor Picklew.i.l.l.y or whatever his name is while we're still stuck at home."

"Training in the deadly arts," Lydia threw in.

Kitty nodded. "Yes, I should have said. Because that is what we're talking about, after all."

"Exactly. The deadly arts. And not whether or not the Master misses his special apprentice."

"Lydia Bennet!" Mary snapped. "You go too far!"

Lydia gave her the kind of look that, not so long before, would have preceded the sticking out of a tongue.

"What? I was merely clarifying what we aren't talking about. Lizzy. And Master Hawksworth. And what they think of each other. None of that has nothing to do with the deadly arts, so why would I bring it up?"

"ENOUGH!".

The Master's roar was so loud it didn't just freeze all three girls in their tracks, it startled something out of hiding in the brush nearby. There was a sudden rustle of leaves, a snapping of twigs, a pounding as of heavy footfalls... and a doe and her fawn darted across the road.

"May we kiss them, Master?" Lydia asked, already taking a few bounding strides ahead.

"No! We stay together!"

As sharp as the Master's voice was, there was also a curious, distant quality to it that drew Mary around to look at him.

She found nothing to see. There was no sign of him on the road.

"Master?" Mary gasped. "He's gone!"

"Not far," Kitty said. "Look up, Mary."

Mary looked up.

Master Hawksworth was standing on a thick branch jutting out over the lane.

"If that had been an unmentionable," he said, "claiming the high ground could have been the first step on the path to victory. From here, a warrior might use throwing stars or daggers to hara.s.s his foe, returning to the ground for an honorable kill stroke at the moment of his choosing. Remember that the next time you find yourself taken by surprise, Mary Bennet."

"Yes, Master. I will."

Master Hawksworth dropped to the ground with a beautifully executed Leaping Leopard-then immediately Leopard Leapt right back up to the same branch again.

"Yes, yes... I see," Mary said. "I shan't forget when the opportunity presents itself, Master."

"Mary, you dolt!" Kitty cried. "The opportunity's here!"

Mary turned around to find her sisters gone.

"High ground, Mary!" Lydia called out. "High ground!"

Mary followed the sound of her sister's voice and spied Lydia clambering up a nearby tree. Kitty was already straddling a branch higher up, arms wrapped around the trunk.

"Don't look at us!" Kitty pointed frantically downward. "Look at him! Look at him!"

"Look at who?"

By the time she spotted the zombie, it was almost upon her, and she forgot all about high ground and the Master's path to victory.

The dreadful had been so long dead there was no clothing left on it and only enough flesh to hold some of the bones together. It had no arms, no legs-just a rib cage, neck, and skull st.i.tched over with stringy cords of old skin.

It humped its way toward Mary like a ma.s.sive, rabid inchworm. A fast one.

Mary whipped up her flintlock and fired, and one of the unmentionable's shoulders exploded in a shower of powderized bone.

The rest of the unmentionable kept coming.

"Run!" Kitty shouted. "Let the Master handle it!"

"Yes!" Lydia threw in. "Our tree's full, but there are plenty of others for you!"

The Master himself said nothing. He was sure to be watching, though. Sure to be judging. And Mary intended to pa.s.s the test.

She threw aside her pistol and drew her katana just as the dreadful reached her, and she sidestepped and sliced downward simultaneously.

The unmentionable lost its other shoulder. What was left slithered around to snap at Mary's heels.

A clumsy attempt at a Leaping Leopard nearly broke her ankles, but it also took her out of range just in time.

"Ooooo, nice jump," Lydia said. She whipped a throwing star into the top of the dreadful's head, yet it didn't even seem to notice.

"Climb, Mary, climb!" Kitty called out. "Before the zombie charges again!"

"Oh, Kitty-you, too, now?" Mary widened her stance and brought up her sword. "A lady says unmentionable."

The dreadful wriggled toward her again. Just as it jerked its head up for a chomp out of her s.h.i.+n, she plunged her sword through its mouth, skewering it straight down the spine. Yet still the creature wouldn't die, and it writhed wildly and bit at the blade of the katana, chipping off shards of its own jaw.

Mary walked over to the tree her sisters were sitting in and bashed the zombie against the trunk until what was left of its brain had been smeared like blackberry jam across the rough bark. At last, the unmentionable stopped moving.

"Mary, that was... astonis.h.i.+ng."

Kitty leapt down from her branch.

"Yes," Lydia said, dropping to the ground beside her. "But did you have to beat out the thing's brains? I am not picking my throwing star out of that mess."

Mary paid them no heed. Neither their praise nor their censure meant anything to her. There was only one person who mattered.

She looked up at Master Hawksworth.

He watched her from on high for what seemed like a long, long time. And then, at last, he spoke.

"Well done, Mary Bennet. Your sword work was sloppy, however, and that Leaping Leopard? Shameful! We must return to the dojo at once for more practice."