"And what of me?" Jane asked. "I was dancing with the baron when you arrived with the dreadfuls at your heels."
"Yes. But weren"t you just doing your duty as you understood it-staying close to the man you"d been told to protect? When it became obvious that man was unworthy of your protection, you removed it as only a true warrior would."
Jane seemed relieved even as the banging on the door grew louder.
"I wanted to be certain you wouldn"t make the same mistake I did," Mr. Bennet said, gazing at Jane, then Elizabeth. "Twenty years ago, I chose a pa.s.sing fancy over my own honor. You have proved yourselves stronger than that. Stronger than I was... and am. I"m certain you would have become far greater-"
The door"s top panel splintered, and a b.l.o.o.d.y stump popped through. It was followed by clawing hands that ripped frantically at the wood, tearing it apart, splintered shard by splintered shard.
As the Bennets stepped back, spreading out across the attic, giving themselves room to fight, Elizabeth allowed herself one last glance at all her sisters. With them, at least, there could still be love, and she felt lucky, in a way, to die surrounded by it.
She was smiling when she looked again toward the top of the stairs and braced for the ghoulish faces that would appear there any second.
"Let"s make a game of it, shall we?" she said. "Whoever kills the most, wins."
"I will kill twenty!" Lydia declared.
"I will kill thirty!" Kitty countered.
Mary paused for a moment of sober calculation.
"I will kill thirty-two," she said.
"I will kill as long as I must," said Jane.
"And I will kill as long as I can," said Elizabeth.
The door gave way.
The whole house shook.
"What-" Lydia began.
The booms came then, so many of them in such quick succession they could have been rolling beats on some monstrous drum. Screams followed-high, whistling, eerie, neither human nor zombie.
"I can"t believe it," Mr. Bennet said, and he burst into raucous laughter. "To hear it again now, after all these years! The most beautiful sound in creation!"
Elizabeth wasn"t sure which sound he meant, for others were rising up from downstairs. Howls and screeches and the pounding of what sounded like a thousand feet.
The dreadfuls were fleeing.
"To a window! To a window!" Mr. Bennet cried, scampering toward the stairs.
The girls looked at each other in utter confusion, then ran after their father. He led them, casually beheading the small handful of unmentionables still in the hall, to the baron"s bedchamber.
The whole world convulsed again as his daughters joined him on the balcony. And when the roars and screams came a second later, they could see now what caused them.
MR. BENNET GAVE EACH OF HIS DAUGHTERS A LONG LOOK. "YOU WILL DIE WARRIORS, ALL OF YOU.".
A line of cannons was spread along the eastern edge of Netherfield Park, and they spat not just smoke and flame but black blurs that shot across the grounds and through the dreadful horde, hurling ragged chunks of flesh in every direction.
"Chain shot!" Mr. Bennet hooted happily. He jumped up and down and clapped his hands as a company of mounted soldiers swept around the side of the house and tore through the retreating unmentionables, trampling them and kebabing them on long lances and beheading them with their sabers. "And dragoons! Oooo, and look over there! Lurking in the trees! Ninjas! Ah, it"s just like the old days... the few good ones we had, anyway. There weren"t many, but I tell you they were just... like... this!"
"So word of our plight somehow got through to the king"s army, after all," Jane said.
Her father nodded. "Bless my soul. It"s almost enough to make a tired old man believe in a loving and merciful G.o.d."
Within minutes, a herd hundreds if not thousands strong was more than halved, and the survivors were scattering in every direction. The ones that kept to the open fields were quickly overrun by the dragoons, while scores fleeing into the woods were decapitated by razor wire. The few who turned away in time were cut down by black-clad ninjas pouncing down from overhanging branches.
"That"s it, then?" Elizabeth said, still too stunned to trust her sense of relief. "Just like that? It"s over?"
"Oh, dear me, no. Quite the opposite." Mr. Bennet swept a hand out over the gory diorama before them. "This is no happy ending we have here. It"s merely a hopeful beginning."
He turned his back on the scene below, and Elizabeth thought she caught a glimmer of the old, sly Oscar Bennet gleam in his eye.
"Now," he said to her, "shall we let your mother out of the cellar, or go join the fun before it"s over?"
They joined the fun.
EPILOGUE.
ENSIGN OSILLBURY approached the lady cautiously. It wasn"t that he was scared of her, exactly. It was just...
All right, he was scared of her. Terrified, actually. Simply looking at her made his stomach do things that put sweat on his brow, and hearing her name gave him a creepy chill like centipedes running up his arms.
Surely, though, there should be no shame in that, given the things he"d seen her do-and the even worse things the men whispered she was capable of.
He stomped his feet as he came up the hill toward her, went out of his way to snap a few twigs, and when he was still about thirty feet off he cleared his throat for good measure. It wasn"t wise to startle the lady. Not if one wanted to keep one"s brains inside one"s skull.
"What?" she said. The word came out quick and hard and cold. Like everything about her.
She was atop her great white stallion observing the battle below through a spygla.s.s. The unmentionables had been routed, yet you"d hardly have guessed it from the look of distaste on her face.
Then again, she always looked like that-as if she were about to sneeze, or had a pickle tucked under her tongue.
Even though she wasn"t looking at him, Ensign Osillbury saluted. Just to be safe.
"We found survivors in the house, Ma"am. Dozens, perhaps hundreds. It"s really quite miraculous."
"But?"
"Lord Lumpley wasn"t among them. They say he fell to the sorry stricken days ago."
"Hmm. The Prince Regent will be disappointed, no doubt." The lady finally lowered her telescope, though she still didn"t bother looking at Ensign Osillbury. "I care not one whit. Tell Captain Ramsey: We rejoin Lord Paget"s column directly. We have wasted enough time here as it is."
"Yes, Ma"am! Right away, Ma"am!"
The young officer had to jump out of her way as she spun her horse and charged downhill toward the road. It didn"t pay to come between the lady and London. The man who"d brought word of Lord Lumpley"s plight could attest to that. Rumor held that the lady had relations in the besieged capital-a daughter, some said; others, a nephew-and Lord Paget"s order to divert to this remote corner of Hertfordshire had been met with displeasure, to say the least.
"Oh." The lady turned her mount and jerked her chin at the box that sat on the hilltop, near where she"d been watching the battle. "Have my ninjas attend to him."
And with that Lady Catherine de Bourgh, defender of the realm and head of the Order of the Ever Watchful, whirled away again and galloped off.
Ensign Osillbury started to hustle after her, but a hissing whisper stopped him.
"Please... plea.s.sssssssse..."
The ensign turned and walked warily up the hill again. It wasn"t fear that slowed him this time. He wasn"t scared of the box"s contents. He just didn"t like looking at them. No one did.
The box was about three feet high and open in front, almost like a child"s casket at a wake. As Ensign Osillbury knelt down beside it, he was careful to position himself at an angle so as not to look straight on at the bandage-wrapped homunculus strapped inside. All he could see was one of the stumps Lady Catherine had created with her own sword.
The man"s arms and legs had been riddled with b.l.o.o.d.y bites when he"d come riding into camp, and after learning the lady was there with Lord Paget, he"d insisted on seeing her immediately, doctors be d.a.m.ned. The two knew each other, it seemed-the man had been some sort of student of hers. And when they were through talking, the lady had declared that she"d spare her disciple a trip to the surgery.
Those who saw it swore there"d been no mercy in her eyes, however. It was more like fury.
"Yes, sir?"
"Do you know," the man wheezed, "among the survivors... was there a... a Miss Elizabeth Bennet?"
"I don"t know, Sir. Though, come to think of it, there were some young ladies tearing through the unmentionables rather like Lady Catherine herself, and I think I might have heard someone refer to them as "the Bennet girls.""
"Ohhh... thank... you."
Ensign Osillbury got the impression the man was speaking not to him but to Him.
"Umm, will you be all right up here, Sir? By yourself? While I go get someone to fetch you down?"
There was a moist, sticky rustle, and it took the ensign a moment to realize the man was trying to nod.
"I"ll... be fine. I must accustom myself to waiting... for the help of others. Only... would you turn me a little more... toward the house?"
"Of course, Sir."
The soldier stepped behind the box-he was more than happy to do so-and shifted it a little to the left.
"That"s fine. Thank you."
"Very good, Sir. I"ll just, uhh, be off, then."
And Ensign Osillbury hurried away, leaving the man in the box there alone, watching for Miss Elizabeth Bennet-and practicing his waiting.
THE END.