Page 42 of Fiorenzo

Enzo dug his knees into Fabio’s flanks. The horse plunged into the wood anew.

The distressed cries didn’t cease. Enzo ignored his heart’s pangs and told himself the sounds were a good sign. If Vittorio could cry out, that meant he yet lived. And each cry resounding through the wood told Enzo where he lay and drew him ever nearer to his rescue.

And then, with a final leap from Fabio over a fallen log into a glade where a bending brook had carved out a bowl in the earth, Enzo found his quarry.

It seemed Vittorio had cornered the stag. The stag, however, had turned matters around on the hound and now had him backed against the muddy bank. Hooves like knives lashed out against Vittorio’s gleaming fangs. The hound’s jaws thudded shut on air as they tried and failed to latch on to the fleet beast twice his own size. Its slender limbs belied the bulk of its body, and the thick ruff around its neck protected the mighty sinews that even now sought to plunge its sixteen-pointed antlers into Vittorio.

Vittorio was swift. The stag was swifter. It caught him up on its tines and flung him against an ancient oak. A hideous crack broke the forest’s tranquil silence. A few scraps of bark fell down alongside Vittorio’s limp form. The stag surged in to trample him.

All this within the three shakes of a sail it took for Enzo to arrive and perceive how matters stood.

Enzo drew Fabio up short. Then he braced his palms against Fabio’s withers and swung himself out of the saddle in a singular leap. He rolled as he landed and came up with his knife unsheathed.

And a good thing, too, for no sooner had he stood than the stag rounded on him.

Better him than Vittorio, he thought.

He didn’t have time to do more than think before the stag charged.

Behind him, Fabio shrieked and bolted. Understandable. Arguably wiser than Enzo’s own action, which was to brace, crouch, and seize the stag by the antlers.

It mostly worked. With his left hand wielding his knife, he could only seize the stag’s left antler in his own right hand.

Which meant the right antler, with a quick twist of the stag’s sinewy neck, remained free to plunge through his ribs just beneath his heart.

The pain was not entirely unlike anything he’d felt before. Still, it knocked the breath out of him. And what breath he tried to draw afterward leaked into his punctured lung as much from the wound as from his throat. Blood bubbled up around the antler to ooze down his front. His black waistcoat disguised most of the crimson stain. He felt it nonetheless, a cold damp soaking through the linen shirt beneath.

The force of the blow drove them both to the ground. The stag tried to wrench itself free. Enzo’s fist clenched tighter around the antler he’d caught. The one stuck within him twisted. He tried not to imagine it splintering as it sent ripples of agony from the sucking wound. The stag’s legs scrambled against the tree roots beneath them, scattering whatever dead leaves of autumn had survived winter’s snows over the fresh-grown moss of spring. Its eyes rolled wildly in the skull lashed by bone to Enzo’s own chest.

Well within range of his knife.

If he’d still had it.

His left arm trembled. The antler hadn’t struck his pectoral, but the pain nevertheless radiated up to his shoulder and out through his fingertips. It’d forced his fist to splay in a convulsive jerk. The knife had dropt to the ground. He couldn’t see it now—could hardly see anything past the stag’s chaotic bulk. Nonetheless he grit his teeth through the pain and forced his shaking arm to grope across the tree roots in search of a familiar handle.

A rough bark rent the air. Something thudded against the stag, driving it hard into Enzo again and forcing out what little breath he’d regathered. The stag itself kicked wildly and screamed. Enzo had heard a deer’s scream before, but never so near to his ears as this. And small wonder it screamed and kicked, for Vittorio had scrambled up to leap onto its back and latch his mighty jaws on the nape of its maned neck.

And still Enzo kept up his blind search. His fingertips went numb before they brushed against something smooth. The blade rather than the handle, but the knife nonetheless. His scrambling fingers snatched it up, flipped it over, and held it firm. He summoned all his remaining strength to drive the blade down through the stag’s eye.

With a final shriek and a shudder that sent lightning-forks of agony sparking from the wound throughout Enzo’s body, the stag perished. It gave a few final futile kicks of its legs. Then it lay still. Its dead weight pinned him to the ground. Even if he weren’t wounded, he could never have hoped to move. He struggled in vain. His strength ebbed with every throb of his heart forcing blood out from the wound. His eyes shut against his will.

A low whimpering rang in his ears. Something wet grazed his cheek. He forced his eyes open to find Vittorio had limped over to where he lay and now nuzzled his face, trying in his own simple bestial way to assist.

“Good boy,” Enzo said. Blood left his lips alongside his words.

Vittorio whined.

Enzo supposed he ought to feel victorious. While the stag had proved no Ceryneian hind, it’d certainly put up a fury of a fight, and to have the honor of slaying it showed he held Diana’s favor.

But all he could think of was how, even if he survived the rising tide of blood filling his left lung, he couldn’t possibly sail back to Halcyon tomorrow. He’d have to wait at least a fortnight until he could gaze again into Fiore’s soft dark eyes. To hear the sweet music of a voice that refused to sing whispering low in his ear. To feel a tender and well-practiced caress remove his mask and grace his cheek with the touch he yearned for. He thought of Fiore, still recovering from his own infirmity, waiting in vain for his return.

Distantly Enzo heard the cacophonous approach of hounds and hooves. The remainder of the hunting party would arrive soon.

But they did not arrive before the flock of ravens clouding his vision overtook him altogether and sent him spiraling down into darkness.

~

CHAPTER ELEVEN

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