“Is there a point to all of this rambling, Warrior Smythe?” Tulla asked with narrowed eyes.
“I take everything that has happened—including my Lieutenant becoming a Knight on her very first recommendation—and perhaps even my own exile to these frozen northlands to be part of your designs!” Smythe snapped, his hand going to the dagger at his waist.
“You give me too much credit, ‘Sir’ Smythe,” she made it a point to use his New Blood title in the most deriding way possible. “What I wanted was what I asked for: your recommendation to the Prince—which you assured me would not be acted upon—so that she might continue with this army when it marched again without being dismissed and sent home. Whether or not she was a genius on the battlefield or merely uninspired mattered not to me then, and it matters little to me now.”
“Bah,” Smythe sneered, “my Grandsire warned me about women in the army. ‘Let a Witch in with the warriors,’ he said, ‘and before you know there’ll be plots and counterplots and all sorts of drama unfit for a war-band.’ I see now just how right he was! I won’t have your spoon stirring in my soup pot any longer. Do you hear me, Witch?”
“If you find your duty to your people too inconvenient, perhaps you’d like to forget your roots and settle down with an fat little Invader wife. You could prop your feet up by the fire and relax, while she starts popping out good little Invader brats for you, Knight,” Tulla spat.
“And maybe I’ll do just that,” the Captain said in a rising voice, “for the few years I have left—interspersed between slaughtering Ice Raiders in job lots, until one of them does for me!”
“So the lapdog finally sees its reward for years of faithful arse-licking and doesn’t like the taste,” the old Witch mocked.
For half a moment Madame Tulla wondered if she had gone too far when Smythe started to rise from his seat with blood in his eyes. Then he hesitated and the moment passed.
“At least I have something to show for my years,” the Captain said hotly, and Tulla surreptitiously released the breath she’d been holding, “which is better than a barren womb and a series of unmarked graves scattered across the land.”
“You know nothing of what I have suffered for our people,” Tulla hissed, infuriated at this man who thought he could take her to task like she was some young filly too headstrong and inexperienced to know the realities of the world.
“I’ve marched over hill, through dale, and from one side of this kingdom to the other—and beyond,” Smythe said dismissively. “If you’ve done more than kindle a brushfire rebellion or two and gotten a lot of good men—and I’m guessing a fair share of our lasses killed too—I haven’t heard about it. And if I haven’t heard about it then it hasn’t happened yet,” he paused to add weight, “and I say this as a man and a warrior who’s fought on both sides of such things.”
“Thou traitor,” Tulla hissed, rage boiling up within her.
“More of our people are alive today because of my actions than would have been otherwise; I’m sure and certain the same cannot be said of thee,” Captain Smythe said, his own brogue thickening in response. “For all of thy talk of our people, it’s women like thee that always presage the worst of our suffering.”
Epilogue 2: Hard Reckonings
“Give me one good reason I shouldn’t bind thee with my powers until thou art begging for my mercy?” Tulla snarled.
Smythe almost contemptuously rapped his knuckles on his chest and the sound of cold iron underneath his outerwear rang through the tent. “At best you’d manage a little confusion, and in a tent this small there’s nowhere to run. Try it and see what happens…I dare thee,” the grizzled warrior challenged.
“What is it thou want from me, blood-traitor?” Tulla demanded.
“I came to give fair warning to you about the Thorn,” Smythe said tightly, slipping back into the parlance of the army, “and find out if you deliberately tried to stick me out here on the backside of nowhere and strip me of my Company.”
“Your warning—much too late, as it is—has been received,” the old Witch replied. “And as for me, what would it matter if I had been the one that got you planted here?”
“If you had, then one of us won’t be walking out of this tent,” the Captain remarked far too calmly, his muscles tensing.
“You give me far too much credit, Knight,” Tulla said with a low cackle. “Invader Princes with their legions of Wizards and spellcasters do not jump to do my bidding at my beck and call. Would that they did, as this land would have been freed from their tyranny long ago! I am afraid that whatever fate has befallen thee is not of my creation.”
She could see the way his eyes narrowed and decided to press on. She didn’t care what happened to him, and hadn’t really even before this latest meeting but saw no need to bring down suspicion on herself by killing a decorated war leader inside her own tent.
“Surely even you can see that having the Thorn bring too much attention from the Invader Generals can only hurt my cause, while receiving their accolades and a Knighthood only adds complications and difficulties to an already complex mess,”’ she said sharply. “And as for you, I think you give both me and thee too much credit. I have not the power, and even did, the cause of our people is better served by having at least one senior leader present who is of native blood. When thou are gone, who will they replace thee with I wonder; the young Thorn of a girl, who would be the least pitiful choice for us perhaps? Or a more seasoned Invader with good bloodlines? Neither of us has anything to gain, yet much to lose, from this turn.”
There was a pregnant pause. “I wish I could believe you,” Smythe said finally.
“Believe what you wish, but do it outside of this tent,” Tulla replied, her mouth twisting contemptuously.
“If I find out you did have a hand in exiling me to this frozen wasteland, we’ll have this conversation again,” Smythe said, his eyes delivering a hot promise that the next ‘conversation’ would not be with words.
“Be gone,” Tulla snapped as she turned her back on him.
She waited until the Captain had left the tent—and then several candle slivers after that—before loudly clearing her throat.
“Yes, Wise One?” came the quick response. The soft, dulcet voice from outside the tent instantly set the old Witch’s shoulders at ease.
“You heard what was said?” Tulla asked calmly, even as she stood and swept open the tent flap, silently inviting the other inside.
“No Ma’am—except when voices rose, of course,” said the tall, hooded figure that ducked inside and quickly sat on the same leather pillow the captain had. “However, using the Sight I was able to see what was happening the entire time; thou were in no danger.”
“Good,” Tulla took a moment to gather her thoughts and then pierced the slender figure with her glare. The scent of damp earth, which had been relatively faint a moment earlier, filled the old Witch’s nostrils as the young woman sat down and Tulla nodded in satisfaction. This one’s training proceeds apace, she silently mused, her affinity with the Earth Magics is as strong as I had hoped.
“Dost thou have another mission for me, Madame?” the hooded figure asked eagerly in that same, soft, voice.
The old woman knew this was another opportunity to teach her pupil, so she leaned back slightly and considered. “What would thou have done if he had attacked me?” Tulla asked in a casual tone.
“He would have been dead before he knew it had he raised a hand against thee, Wise One,” said her guest, gesturing with a hand to the short bow draped over one shoulder and Tulla’s eyes spotted the handle of several knives strapped to the arm underneath a loose sleeve. “Countryman or not, no one raises hand against a leader of the people.”
“You have done well, my little Thorn,” Tulla said fondly. This one had been trained well, and it was with great satisfaction that Tulla had guided her along the ancient path of the Old Blood. “But for now you must continue to monitor the Swan encampment and watch over the half-bre
ed Lieutenant the same as before—while we continue with your training, of course.”
“Still only seen from a distance?” the Thorn said with the barest hint of dissatisfaction entering her soft voice.
“No one must know you are there,” Tulla said sternly, “for until the time is right, thou shall be a hidden arrow in my quiver—one that is ready to strike on a moment’s notice if necessary.”
“Your wish is my desire, Wise One,” the Thorn said softly, bowing low until her forehead was almost touching the floor. “Instruct me and I obey.”
“We shall continue your instruction in the arts magic and martial, the same as before, but for now and into the foreseeable future you must remain the hidden Huntress: unseen by her prey, yet still deadly when she strikes from the shadows. I cannot tell you everything, but I can say with certainty this will not always be the case,” Tulla said, a smile of dark satisfaction crossing her lips. “Someday we will no longer skulk in the darkness. Someday our enemies will see us and shudder at our passing. Someday…,” she drew in a deep shuddering breath, “someday the Witch Guard will rise again!”
The Thorn threw back her hood and the cold smile on her lips almost seemed at odds with the soft voice and strikingly beautiful features normally hidden by her dark cowl.
“Instruct me, my Mistress,” the Thorn said her voice rising to a feverish pitch.
Tulla smiled darkly. All roads led to the liberation of their people from the Invaders that oppressed them, but a wise woman refused to place all her eggs in one basket—and a huntress never pursued quarry only one arrow in her quiver.
Oh yes, one day soon—sooner than those naysayer-do-nothings in the Common Brood could possibly imagine —the Witch Guard would return. When they did, her people would finally cast off the chains which bound them to the Invaders’ yoke.
“Someday soon,” Tulla whispered, taking in another deep, shuddering breath. She didn’t care how many Invaders she had to kill, or who she had to break to get there…
Her people would be free.
Epilogue 3: A Mother and a Witch
“Muirgheal, the Branch Witch is outside of our control. There is nothing the Brood Council can do,” they had said, and the words still echoed in her mind like the clatter of falling rocks echoing through a canyon.
Muirgheal clenched her fists. The rest of the Two Wicks Militia party had returned from the Prince’s Flower War, with tales of battles and pockets flush with coins almost a month ago, but not her daughter.
It had taken the better part of a month before a Working Moon had risen and when she had taken her case before the Council only to be rejected.
“She is just a girl, without training in our ways,” she had argued before the other Witches, “she travels to war not in accordance with our ancient traditions and ways, but at the behest of a New Blood Lord.”
But her argument had been rejected. Lords did not force women to warfare unless they were Healers, the Council had decided, and thus Falon’s decision to march with the warriors of the twin villages had been her own decision. The fact that Falon had been made a Lieutenant and rewarded with the rank of a Squire for fighting on the battlefield had not helped her mother’s case with the other Witches of the Brood Council.
Tossing a bundle of herbs onto the straw tick that doubled as both low laying table and bed, she added a packet of food consisting of cheese, walnuts and squirrel jerky before rolling the blanket up tight and wrapping a string of hemp twine around it.
With a savage jerk around she what imagined was the old Earth Witch’s neck, she pulled the twine tight and knotted it off.
Picking up a stick with a hooked end she had carved into it over the past three weeks, she slipped it through the twine and then levered the entire thing. Stick, twine, and travel roll were now easily propped over her shoulder.
Maybe the old one who has claimed my daughter, and those Witches who are like her, are right, Muirgheal thought, stepping outside her rickety hut and closing the door for what might be the last time. Perhaps the Brood has lost its way, forgetting too much of itself as it struggles to blend in and survive the struggles of the day until it is no longer capable of fulfilling the service for which it had been created, she pondered, and that thought filled her with a measure of dread she had not known since she had been a child.
She simply didn’t know what to believe. But after her appeal to the only higher authority she recognized had been denied, she no longer cared. The Brood Council said they had no authority in this matter, and the Dirt Witch claimed she had Guard rights to Falon.
Well, Muirgheal had rights too: the rights of a Mother, a Witch, and a member of the Common Brood! Bind my daughter, would she, she thought bitterly. Claim her as a Thorn, when even I, let alone Falon, do not even knew the meaning of the term—let alone what it stood for? Not while I draw breath, she swore silently.
She had made the sacrifices—a mother’s sacrifices—so that her daughter would never have to do likewise. She had walked the hard road, treaded the dark paths, and starved alone in the woods so that her daughter could be free of it. Falon should have the freedom to choose the paths she walked, whether to follow in her mother’s footsteps and embrace the powers within her or to make clean break and start a new tradition. The chance to live a life away from the loneliness and privations of woods was the only gift Muirgheal had ever striven to give her daughter…and now this Earth Witch had stolen that painstakingly granted boon.
Deep within herself, Muirgheal burned with a mother’s silent fury and her stride lengthened until her legs were swallowing the dirt trail at a fast clip.
After all her many and varied sacrifices, some Branch Witch—an Earth Hag—with no more care for the broken lives she left strewn behind her like broken toys, thought to bind her daughter and claim Guard rights over her Falon?
No one would take away her daughter’s choice—no one! Not the Brood Council, and not some would-be daughter thief of an Earth Whore lost in her senile delusions of rebellion. Filled with fury and angry emotion, Muirgheal almost didn’t stop off at the Twin Orchards estate, afraid that she might not be fit company at present for young girls and one small boy. But her feet seemed to know which way they were going, even when her head did not, and soon she was striding up to the Estate House.
Stopping to collect herself before knocking, she bent down in the road and swirled a finger in a muddy puddle. Falon must ache with loneliness, having never been apart from her family, she decided, picking up a mud covered finger. It was the work of but a moment to place her power within the mud and trace the beginnings of a rune across her cheek and forehead. She was going to need all the help she could get on her long journey, and a link to home would be helpful in several ways.
If it would ease her daughter’s mind to receive a packet of mail and a personal reassurance that her kin were well when Muirgheal finally caught up with her, then a small diversion now was well worth it. And although her feet itched to get back on the trail, she forced them the rest of the way up to the Estate House.
Catching sight of the orchards for which the state took its name, a tight smile crossed her face and she decided that maybe her feet were smarter than she was. After all, the Two Wicks Witch had several ancestors on the estate’s old Orchards. Asking blessings of the Old Ones was never amiss, but more than that a haft of spirit wood freely given had certain properties that might come in useful—especially when she finally caught up with her daughter and her aged captor.
Already the good deed of coming here had rebounded three fold. “I’m coming for you, Dirt Witch,” she whispered, already tallying the workings and counter workings she would need to use when she fell upon the thief.
Then the door opened and one of her daughter’s sisters came running out, squealing for a hug from auntie Muirgheal, and so she pasted on a warm smile. The duties of walking a dark path would be upon her soon enough, but now it was time to bask in the borrowed light of home and hearth to fortify herself for the j
ourney ahead.
She silently sent up a prayer for her daughter to stay strong a while long, before following the little girl into the house.
The End
The Painting (Rise of the Witch Guard Book 2) Page 43