“This is preposterous,” Sayer concluded.
“I’ll show you preposterous,” Forest countered and pulled her pack onto her bed. She fished out the six necklaces she’d taken from the bodies of the marauders and laid them on the foot of her bed.
The Council stared at them, unsure of what to make of their significance.
“I took them from the bodies of the men that chased me from the burning village,” Forest told them.
Lily looked aghast, but the Council only exchanged more skeptical glances.
Forest grew flustered. “I led them into an ambush of dire wolves. There were more than six men, but fewer than six necks were left to retrieve these from.”
Her story was growing more unbelievable by the moment.
“I haven’t been sitting in the woods this past moon doing arts and crafts with bits of shell I found only the gods know where. I’ve been running for my life. There’s nothing to stop our village from being attacked next.” Forest could think of nothing more to say.
After a long moment of silence, Fayre picked up the necklaces and gestured to her colleagues, “We should consult on this matter, but a child’s bedside is not the place for it.” She turned to Forest, “Do you mind if I borrow these?”
“Keep them. I’ve no use for them, and they chill me just looking at them.”
The Council filed out, consumed by their thoughts.
Forest spent the next few days being doted on by Lily as her strength returned. Despite complaining, she secretly loved it.
A knock on the door was followed by Lily’s inviting Calix in. Forest could tell by the discouragement that hung on him that he was about to deliver bad news.
He inhaled deeply and addressed Forest, “The Council wants to take a wait-and-see approach to your news.”
“Is that ‘wait’ until a spear is sticking out of your chest, or ‘see’ your friends and family slaughtered?” Forest was beside herself that the fools couldn’t see beyond their limited experience.
“They told the hunters to be on the lookout for anything suspicious.”
“That’s laughable. By the time our hunters notice something ‘suspicious,’ death will be at our doorstep!”
Calix looked torn. This was also simply beyond his capacity to imagine. It was hard enough to believe that other people inhabited the world, let alone plotted their murder. Sure, part of him knew that the airships had to come from somewhere and go on to somewhere else, but those places had never felt real, or at very least far away.
“I won’t have my fate decided by a band of idiots… no offense to your father.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I have no idea, but sitting here waiting to be killed isn’t it.”
Forest paced around the room, pulling out her ranging leathers and furs, and throwing them on her bed. She spun and cornered Calix.
“Promise me that when the time comes, you’ll do what you need to do to keep my sister and Cera away from those animals.”
“It won’t come to that,” he tried to reassure her.
She grabbed his shirt in her tiny fist, “Do not talk to me like I’m a child. There are worse things than death, and I’ve seen them. You promise me or you get the hell out of here!”
“Okay, okay. I promise,” he capitulated.
“You’ve promised,” she declared. “You keep your word.” She skewered him with her eyes, then turned to continue packing. She muttered to herself, “If they need something more to knock them off their asses, I’ll get them something. If I have to bring back a murdered baby to lay at their feet, then that’s what I’ll gods-damn well do.”
Calix couldn’t think of anything to say, and he felt that he was only in Forest’s way as she darted around the cottage pulling out items for her journey, so he went to find Lily and Cera to ask them to talk sense into her.
Lily and Cera barely arrived in time to intercept Forest’s leaving.
“You can’t be heading out again,” Lily protested. “You just returned, and you were gone so long.”
“It’s not my gods-damn choice now, is it?” Forest replied angrily and pushed past them.
“Forest!” they called after her, but they had nothing more to offer, so she strode away.
Forest left the village and made her way north. She made haste and dedicated only part of her senses to the dangers of the woods. She felt that she had no time to be as cautious as she’d typically be – time was of the essence. She headed back toward the sacked village, hoping to pick up the trail of the marauders there.
The closer she got to it, the more cautious she became. There was no telling whether the marauders had left someone behind to dispatch returning survivors. One or more lookouts could be anywhere within sight of the village. It would be too risky to enter it, even if she could find something there that would force the Council to believe her. She’d have to skirt the village instead and hope to pick up a trail that would indicate to her where they’d gone.
When she recognized the hills surrounding the village, she crept forward slowly and under cover, so that no scout would notice her movements. It took an eternity to crest the hill that overlooked the village. She crawled into the base of a bush and peered down at the remains of the village. It looked pretty much as it had when she’d last seen it, except that it now lay deserted or at least appeared abandoned, and there were no longer bodies strewn about.
She remembered where she’d seen the wagons. That was the best place to start looking for clues as to where they’d gone. Fixing the spot in her mind, she plotted a course to it that took her in a wide circle around the village. Having committed the arc to memory, she edged backward out of the bush and off the hill, careful to move away as slowly as she had on her approach.
Even though she was swinging wide of the village, she moved as stealthily as she could and listened for any clues of a foreign presence. When she felt she was near her destination, Forest searched until she found ruts that indicated that the wagons had been pulled northeast. She moved away from the path and tried to follow it along a parallel course as far away from it as she deemed practical. Scouts could also have been left to monitor the marauders’ retreat, and Forest didn’t want to encounter one. Guessing at the wagons’ path was not difficult because she imagined that they would likely be drawn along the easiest route. Several times, however, she became unsure that she still paralleled the track and had to search for it to confirm that she hadn’t strayed from it. It was a slow way to advance, but she felt safer that way.
The track wound toward thinning forest. It became harder to stay hidden, but she did her best. She began to feel uneasy. Something was amiss. Forest stopped, leaned against a tree, and listened for a long while. The sounds of the forest did not resume the way they should have once she’d stopped disturbing them. This told her that something else was quieting the animals. She wasn’t alone.
Her heart beat faster, and Forest struggled to calm herself. There was no evidence that she’d been discovered. She moved slowly to find vantage points from which she could survey all directions. She remembered Kala’s lessons about inferring from the terrain the places where predators would wait and watch for passing prey. Thinking in this vein, she spied a copse of trees that had a commanding view of a spot where the path narrowed as it passed between two hills. It was a natural funnel, and it would make an ideal spot for an ambush, with the attacker having the advantage of higher ground.
Forest waited until it was closer to dusk, and the shadows deepened. This emboldened her to move about despite the decreased cover. She selected an angle of approach that would keep her out of sight of anyone in the copse. Moving among the lengthening shadows, she drew close enough to spot a platform in the trees. Creeping closer still, she saw a scout standing on it, leaning against the trunk of one of the supporting trees.
Tree forts are all the rage, she thought sarcastically, but doubting that the scout would be alone here in the middle of nowhere, she crawled s
lowly into a dense bush and peeked out. She couldn’t see much, but her patience was rewarded with a changing of the guard just before it grew dark. She watched the direction in which the ‘off-duty’ guard went and quietly tailed him.
She drew near a clearing hidden inside the ring of trees. It hid a small encampment of three or four men. They spoke to each other in low voices, but accustomed as she’d become to the quiet, Forest was able to make out bits of their conversation. A lot of it involved the macho teasing that passed between men-at-arms. There was consensus that this assignment was either punishment or grossly unfair.
She heard the name Soren a few times, but always in the context of someone spoken about rather than spoken to. She began to wonder if Soren was the name of the ‘on-duty’ lookout, but there was a hint of reverence, or fear, or both in the way the men said it that didn’t fit with the way they would refer to a colleague.
A man rose suddenly and walked straight toward her hiding place. She tensed and moved her hand slowly to her knife. He advanced until he was within striking distance and reached for his belt. Forest slid her knife out of its sheath. Instead of noticing her, however, he began relieving himself into the bush. Forest was revolted but remained still.
Great, she thought, I’m cold, alone, hungry, and risking my life… and now I’m getting pissed on.
It went on for an unnaturally long time. Another man walked out of the bush beside where Forest lay and clapped the peeing man on the back.
“Put that thing away before you hurt yourself,” the man joked.
The peeing man laughed, finished up, and sauntered back to his comrades.
Stupid, thought Forest. Of course, they’d have someone scouting the perimeter. It was dumb luck that I didn’t stumble into him.
She was playing a dangerous game, and she didn’t think that there was much more she could learn from their casual banter. Forest slid herself backward out of the bush. She hoped that the men wouldn’t scout around their camp at night, given that she could barely see her hand in front of her face. She assumed that one of them would probably spend the night up on the treed platform, though, so she angled away from where she thought it was and slowly made her way out of the trees.
Now that she had a better sense of who patrolled the woods, she vowed to be more vigilant for such lookouts. At the moment, however, she needed somewhere suitably hidden to sleep. She overnighted in a tree, but come dawn, she felt disgusted with smelling of urine. She followed signs of descending terrain in the hope of finding water and was rewarded by a gurgling stream of meltwater running down a hill.
Although she couldn’t stand the smell of herself a moment longer, she fought the urge to wade straight into the stream. Instead, she set about making a fire first. The water would be frigid, and she’d need a fire to warm herself after washing. Once she had a smokeless fire going, she waded into the icy waters and washed herself and her clothes. Her teeth chattered as she emerged. She spent the rest of the morning huddled by the fire with her clothes arrayed around her. She felt cold and vulnerable, shivering in her undergarments.
After a while, she could no longer stand the fear of being set upon undressed, so she pulled her clothes back on, even though they weren’t fully dry. She hoped that her body heat would finish the job. She set off to relocate the wagon path.
She followed it through the ever-thinning forest for several more days until she heard a faint din in the distance. It wasn’t a specific sound, but rather a multitude of unfamiliar sounds. She moved cautiously to the crest of a hill and flattened herself atop it.
Spread out before her was a host larger than she could imagine. There were thousands of men in a vast encampment. The plain before her was dotted with tents and fires and standards flapping in the wind. The camp was loosely organized around a large tent in the center that flew a flag that Forest couldn’t make out, but which had the same colors as the clothing of the men who had burned the village to the ground.
The camp was lightly guarded as the soldiers had little to fear in such numbers. She observed the spacing of several lookouts and the pattern of their movements. She did her best to commit the layout of the camp to memory. Estimating the number of marauders, she now had a sense of how large a force was arrayed against her village, but not why. She couldn’t come this far and not discover that critical piece of information.
She mulled over her options, then slid back off the hilltop. She moved stealthily about the woods, gathering an armful of branches until she could barely carry it. Satisfied, she made straight for the nearest lookout.
“Where the hell are you going?” the guard stopped her, sword leveled between her eyes.
“I was told to fetch wood for a bath,” she replied nervously.
“You idiot, there’s plenty of wood over there,” he said and gestured vaguely behind him and to his left. “Why did I not see you leave the camp?” he asked suspiciously, his eyes narrowing.
“It took me all morning to find enough wood,” she replied and barely resisted bursting into tears.
The guard lowered his sword and shook his head at the useless girl who was wasting his time.
“Get on with it then, but disturb me again, and I’ll beat you senseless with the wood you’re carrying.”
“Thank you, sir,” she replied and scurried forward into the belly of the beast.
26
Kala
Everyone at Baron’s lay low for a moon. The word was that Nairn was out for blood in retaliation for the theft at his residence. His girlfriends were unhappy and let him know it. The monks had recovered their scroll at the cost of many lives and retreated to their temple, but they were secretive, so no one could guess at what consequences might be brewing behind the temple walls.
The boredom of keeping a low profile was fraying everyone’s nerves, Thane’s most of all. He just stomped around, which annoyed Baron beyond belief. Baron sat on his throne drinking sullenly despite the success of the raid, his pet wolf at his feet. Rat kept to himself and Kala alternated between whiling away the time in her nest and spying on Amber. The baker seemed to fancy Amber, and the two of them worked side-by-side, talking and laughing. She looked happy, and Kala was happy for her. Amber was proof that one could escape Baron’s world. Kala tried to believe that she could too.
Kala was in her nest when one of Baron’s young scouts ran into the great room. “Airship!” he shouted, and everyone mobilized. Baron controlled the part of town nearest the gate to the field in which airships landed. As long as he got there first and held off any competition, he got first dibs on whatever spoils were inside. He sold whatever he thought had value and extorted goods out of businesses in his district to resupply the ship.
Baron also had a lucrative side-business kidnapping the children of wealthy merchants and ransoming them under threat of sending them away in the airship. Sometimes it’s passenger compartment would be closed, and it was a bluff, and sometimes it wasn’t. Kala had met one such unfortunate lad whose father had other sons and refused to pay the ransom. If the ransom was paid, Baron would consign to the airship some homeless child that he’d round up instead of the ransomed youth.
With a ship spotted, Baron’s men raced to the hill on which it landed. They hauled it down and secured it to the rings set in the ground that were identical to those at Kala’s village. Kala kept her distance as the airships held so many bad memories for her.
Thane boarded it and searched it. He poked his head out a moment later, “No one on board, but we’ve got an open door.”
Baron rubbed his hands together, “Time for a kidnapping, and I’ve got the perfect target. Kala, this mission is yours. Thane, grab some men and scrounge up some stuff to put in the ship. Rat, when Thane gets back, unload whatever you find of value and bring it back to our building. Leave the crap we can’t sell.”
Thane cracked his knuckles, selected a few men, and headed off. Rat organized the remaining men to get ready to shift the ship’s contents to a waiting wagon o
nce it had been loaded, and some signal opened the remaining compartments. Baron waved Kala over and walked her through his plan. His target was a merchant’s daughter, and he thought Kala would have the best chance of getting close to her quickly enough to kidnap her. Baron sent her off, saying, “Get moving. Time is wasting.”
Kala went straight from the landing site to the merchant’s home to scout it. She assumed that the girl was less likely to be guarded in her home than out on the streets. She found the house from Baron’s instructions and hid in the bushes to wait and watch. The merchant’s compound was reasonably modest compared to others, so he was an odd choice of target. Perhaps Baron is still trying to keep a low profile after the affair with Nairn, she thought, shrugged, and kept watch.
It felt like an eternity before Kala spotted the girl. The sun had set, and Kala saw her through a second-floor window brushing her hair by candlelight. She was pretty, she thought, but not striking like Cera. Remembering Cera released a flood of memories, and Kala was overcome by a wave of homesickness. She was ashamed at what her former friends would think of her stalking this poor girl. What had she become? Who was she anymore?
Kala tamped down these thoughts so she could focus on the task at hand. She tracked the movements of the guards and the occupants of the manor until she had a good sense of how to proceed. She slunk back to Baron’s under cover of darkness and collapsed into her nest for a short sleep.
By the following day, the airship had been stocked, and various goods offloaded and taken to market to be sold by Baron’s cronies. All that remained was an unwilling occupant. Baron paced the great room sipping wine and waiting for Kala to leave. He was so exasperated at her patience that she finally left early just to get away from him, and spent time waiting in the merchant’s bushes until she judged it an opportune time to strike.
Darkness fell, and torches and candles were lit inside. Kala waited until the last light was extinguished before finally making her move. The guards inside the building had likely gone to sleep, leaving only one to guard the gate and one or two to patrol the grounds. The guards weren’t particularly skilled, and Kala found it easy to sneak up behind them and subdue them. She didn’t kill them as they seemed to her like the gate guards in her village – just regular men trying to make a living. She trussed them up and listened for any movement. The courtyard was silent, indicating that she’d done her work well.
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