The Forest at the Edge of the World

by Mercer, Trish

  It was better that way, he reasoned. He wasn’t finished for another ten men.

  The forest remained silent, and he looked around to orient himself. He was probably two miles west of Edge, and the men had been running from the west. Maybe several more pairs were on their way, or had already passed him below or above his point near the boulders.

  A surge of heated dread rushed through Perrin. Targets might be slipping past him, or he might be surrounded and not even know it. It would take only two men to make it into Edge, to find his house—

  He darted out of the cover of the boulders, not entirely sure where he was headed. He readied another arrow as he made his way through a thicket of trees, trying not to bump into any of them.

  He stopped, closed his eyes, and whispered, “Think Perrin, think . . . don’t panic, just think. How can you find them?”

  Tracks.

  He rolled his eyes. Yes, no problem tracking at night.

  He peered into the dark forest and whispered, “Dear Creator, please guide me. Please save my family. And if it is Your will, let me walk out of here again.”

  It was in the corner of his eye that he noticed the movement. Without even thinking, he raised the bow with the arrow already in position and let it fly. It hit its target, barely fifty paces away. The man holding the jagged dagger fell to the ground with a soft thump.

  Perrin already had the next arrow readied, waiting for his companion. A cascade of snow falling from a tree to his left spun him to look to see what caused it.

  The black shadow burst out so fast that initially Perrin thought the tree was falling, until he saw a glint of steel right in his face. He fell backwards as the weight of the Guarder pushed him down. The bow was no longer in his hands as he wrestled with the man, much smaller and weaker than him.

  Perrin flipped the Guarder off of him, throwing him into the snow. As the Guarder rushed to stand up, Perrin lunged, pushing the man on to his stomach. Perrin kneeled down on his back, shoving his face into the hard snow. With his free hand, Perrin pulled out one of his long knives as the Guarder wriggled to free himself from suffocating. Perrin lay on top of the man, crushing him with his full weight.

  With the blade of his long knife up against the Guarder’s throat, he whispered in his ear, “Where are the others?” He yanked up his head to allow the man to answer.

  “You’ll never get out alive!”

  “That’s not what I asked. Where are the others?”

  The man merely laughed.

  Until Perrin cut his throat. “Four. And all of that was just to divert me from seeing your companions, wasn’t it?”

  He stood up quickly and faced the forest. He barely registered that another man was rushing him until he felt the smack in his face. Instinctively, Perrin went on all fours and rolled down the ravine to a cluster of shrubs. There he stopped to look around to find his attacker.

  He came trotting down the ravine, his jagged blade out and ready. Perrin charged up the slope, his own long knife still brandished.

  The Guarder never had a chance. He was obviously not used to running in the snow, because his feet slipped out from underneath him, sending him sliding right into Perrin’s blade.

  “Five,” he whispered as he dropped the body on to the ground. “Where’s number six?” It took only a moment to discover him. Perrin beckoned him with his knife that was dripping red drops into the snow.

  The man thirty paces away instead turned and ran to the south, towards Edge.

  “Oh, no you don’t!” Perrin took off in his own slip-sliding race towards the man who was narrower, swifter and unfortunately, more elusive. Perrin looked ahead through the trees to try to determine where he might be.

  “Yes!” he whispered as he continued his pursuit. Karna should be about eighty paces away from where the Guarder would break from the forest in his race towards Edge.

  Perrin stopped to catch his breath, and a second later the silence of the woods was broken by his ear-piercing whistle. He practiced it frequently as he strode along the forest’s edge. He knew it carried far, because on several occasions when he puckered to the trees, a flock of birds would fly out in alarm, at least five hundred paces deep. He followed the long, high-pitched noise with three shorter whistles. Then he held his breath and waited for the response.

  One quick whistle. Karna would be waiting.

  Perrin bent over to slow his breathing and waited to hear if Karna was successful. About half a minute later Perrin heard shouts, the clang of metal, and a cheer that was immediately muffled, most likely by a sergeant’s hand covering an over-eager private’s mouth.

  “What did I say about keeping it quiet?” he groaned silently at the premature victory. “Six more. Keep your eyes open!”

  Six more.

  ---

  “To the west! The west!” the man whispered hurriedly as he came upon three other companions. “He’s taken down five, chased one to the soldiers.”

  Two of the men in white and gray mottled clothing looked at each other in surprise.

  “Impressive,” one of them said, “but he’ll never get everyone.”

  “Agreed,” said another. “It’s time. The rest should already be on the move.”

  The three other men nodded, stood up, and ran towards the west.

  ---

  Perrin had been walking for ten minutes now, but saw no one else. He kept fighting down the fear that they’d slipped past him and were on his way to his house. But there were soldiers there, too, walking in quiet patrols through the neighborhoods. Another four would be dispatched to watch over his home specifically. Karna would have understood the three short whistles telling him the Guarders were in the forest, and this was not, repeat—not an exercise.

  He nocked another arrow and held up the bow, stepping past boulders and staring into dark shadows.

  ---

  They were in the clear, and they knew it. While the large man in white was wrestling one of their own in a ravine, their group of four in black moved above them, heading east before they turned south.

  They still couldn’t understand where the man like snow had come from, but that didn’t matter. There was a mission to accomplish.

  That’s why they each stopped short, staring in astonishment at what blocked their path.

  “What . . . what . . .” one of them stammered, but the other three had already turned and were running, chased by what appeared to be a mysterious hoard of men, dressed in gray and white.

  They all ran west.

  ---

  Perrin continued to step cautiously, looking down the shaft of his arrow. He twisted and strained to hear any sound. He’d already pushed back his furry hood and slipped the knitted cap up off his ears. Some time ago he lost Mahrree’s white scarf, but she never wore it and wouldn’t miss it. He was filled with a raging heat so strong he was surprised the snow didn’t melt around him.

  Six more.

  They could be anywhere, within miles of his position. The longer he walked the more helpless he felt. They were gone, maybe even snuck past Neeks and Karna and the ninety soldiers patrolling between here and his home. All it would take was one determined, fierce man.

  Mahrree better have put those iron bars back up in the windows. He’d have some angry words with Hycymum in the morning if—

  Sure.

  If a Guarder made it through, and the window and door reinforcements weren’t in place, and his family were dead, yelling at his mother-in-law would be the first thing he’d do.

  He shook that off, along with the thought that he should have run home and checked the windows and doors himself. All he could do now was watch, listen, pray, and hope that—

  He blinked, and blinked again.

  Two more men in black, running parallel to his position, were about to skirt the trees below him. He didn’t wait for the moment, but released the arrow. A shout of agony told him he hit his target, but only wounded him.

  “Go, go!” shouted the downed man, and Perr
in quickly grabbed another arrow.

  He let that one fly blindly, and it sailed without striking anything. Scanning the area for the unseen companion, he snagged another arrow out of his quiver.

  A sound behind him spun him around. It was the other man in black running erratically, as if unsure whether to pursue his partner’s attacker or head towards the village. Perrin ended his wondering with an arrow to his belly. A second arrow quickly followed to put him out of his misery.

  “Eight!” Perrin whispered in momentary triumph, then looked back up to the man he had injured. Seeing no more movement, he jogged over to the site and noticed the man was obviously dead. Perrin stepped closer and saw where the arrow penetrated his body. Oddly, it was protruding out of his thigh—not a life-threatening hit.

  Baffled, Perrin pushed over the man with his boot. When he saw his chest, he jumped back.

  The man in black was lying in a fresh pool of blood, stemming from a chest wound.

  He’d been stabbed.

  ---

  Grandpy Neeks was right on top of the black shadow as he bolted from the forest. Quite literally on top of him. His horse had been acting skittish, and when the two figures in black broke in a dead run from the trees, Grandpy’s mare reared and threw the master sergeant right on to the Guarder, sending them both sprawling into the snowy field.

  Neeks acted as quickly as the startled Guarder. He had his long knife out from his boot slightly faster than the Guarder pulled his jagged dagger. Although Grandpy earned a nicked cheek and a gash in his arm, half a minute later the man in black was bleeding from an incurable throat injury.

  Tracking down his partner took a bit longer.

  Not that the soldiers were unprepared—six of them converged on his position, riding horses that had grown stiff with the cold. But the Guarder was shifty and elusive, darting and dodging then diving under a horse and through the line of six in a remarkable escape attempt.

  That’s why there was another line of eight soldiers waiting in the shadows of the fort wall. The foot chase would have been comical in any other circumstance, Neeks considered later, but as he held his bleeding arm shouting instructions at the soldiers that slipped left and right trying to catch the infiltrator, there was nothing amusing about their attempts.

  But in the end they succeeded, three soldiers piling on top of the Guarder when he slid on a patch of ice, and each one of the corporals plunging their long knives into him.

  It wasn’t until Neeks got the word that the Guarder was dead that he finally sat down in the snow and allowed a surgeon’s assistant to wrap his arm with a bandage.

  “We’ve got three so far tonight, Captain,” he cringed as the dressing was wrapped tightly to staunch the bleeding. “How many do you have?”

  ---

  How did he get stabbed? Perrin wondered as he jogged towards the east again. That’s where they came from, which means they must have gone past him, but were now coming back. But why? Why not just head to the village?

  Perrin wished he’d looked around the ground for an explanation for the chest wound. Perhaps the Guarder had his dagger drawn and fell on it. Maybe there was a sharp tree branch that he was impaled upon. Maybe—

  But Perrin hadn’t seen any evidence, in the short shocked moments he stared in disbelief, of a weapon or bloodied branch. The snow underneath the man was wide and unbroken by anything except the pool of blood.

  Someone had stabbed the Guarder.

  Was it his companion, knowing he wouldn’t be able to escape? Perrin couldn’t remember seeing anything near the dead man, but perhaps his companion was sneaky.

  Or maybe it was something—or someone—else.

  ---

  “He doesn’t know how many are left,” one of the men in mottled white and gray whispered to his three companions as they jogged a safe distance behind the large man in white.

  “He’s not quitting, not yet.”

  “But someone has to get to—”

  “Don’t worry, they are.”

  “I just hope we brought enough,” another man whispered.

  “Don’t worry,” one of the men repeated. “We know how to count to fourteen. That’s all that matters.”

  ---

  Four more, Perrin thought to himself. Four more. Maybe a pair or two had made it out beyond the forest, or all of them were already accounted for, and he was wasting his time.

  That’s why he was making his way to the edge, hoping to find good news. And the other quiver full of arrows he had Karna hide for him in a cavity of rock right inside the trees. He reached it in about five minutes, traded his empty quiver—most of the arrows had fallen out when he was wrestling the Guarder—and reminded himself that he still had four long knives. More than enough for four men.

  At the border of the forest he whistled again, a short-four pattern. A moment later a sergeant came riding up to him, his eyes wide in surprise.

  “You didn’t see me like this,” Captain Shin told him.

  The sergeant nodded that he understood, then shook his head.

  “Report!”

  “We have three Guarders, sir. One that Karna brought down, another that wrestled with Neeks until he killed him—”

  “Who killed who?!” Perrin demanded.

  “Neeks killed the Guarder,” the sergeant clarified, still staring at the captain in white with red splatters on his rabbit fur that for some odd reason reminded the sergeant of butterflies. “He was injured, but will be fine. Caught the third man just outside the fort. He’s dead, sir.”

  Perrin sighed. Two more, still out there. “Report to Karna. Tell him there are still two more, but I don’t know where. Two more!”

  “Sir, how do you know there are two—”

  But the captain had already vanished back into the trees.

  ---

  “Are you sure he said two more?” Karna asked the sergeant.

  “Positive, sir. Captain Shin was very specific.”

  “Remember, sergeant: you didn’t see him.”

  “But sir, I did! I saw—”

  Lieutenant Karna’s groan told the sergeant that he couldn’t believe his eyes on a night like this.

  “Ah. Sorry, sir. I already told the captain—that I didn’t see—that I did not see him.”

  “That’s right,” Karna nodded. He looked up at the forest and rubbed his gloved hands together. “Two more. They could be anywhere. But at least we know where they’re headed.”

  “There are ten around the house, sir. Do we need more?”

  Karna shook his head. “We don’t need Mrs. Shin waking up and seeing her home surrounded. Ten will be noisy enough. The more men we keep here, the fewer the chances they’ll get near the village. Two more . . .”

  ---

  In his heart Perrin was praying for guidance, but it felt wrong.

  First, he wasn’t on his knees with his head bowed—he was walking with his bow strung and his arrow searching for a new target.

  Second, he struggled with the wording. Initially he prayed to find the last two men to kill, but those seemed to be entirely the wrong words to utter in a prayer.

  Then he tried asking for guidance to stop the men, but the Creator certainly knew what Perrin meant by “stop.”

  He felt as if he travelled with a cloud following him, the horrible realization that so far ten men had died that night, seven by his hand. At some point the cloud would descend upon him, and he feared with what paralyzing power it might overtake him. He had to be successful before then. If there was any other way he could find and flush out the last two men without having to kill them, then maybe he could go home with a less heavy heart.

  She could never know about tonight. He’d have to go home with a smile on his face and tell her cheerfully that the night training was over and she had back her husband. But he suspected he wasn’t that good an actor.

  As he crept through the forest he felt a presence as if another cloud, larger and lighter, was coming to absorb the one that hun
g heavily over him. It was as if this cloud could cleanse his horror, allowing him to do what no one else in the village—or even the world—would dare to do.

  In some way he felt his actions that night were good, even sanctioned, because he was preserving the innocent. It wasn’t his choice to be out there taking lives; he was forced into it by others who were out to destroy his family. He was expected—required—to do this. And while the deaths tonight would remain in his memory forever, their heaviness would be nothing compared to the oppressive weight that the death of his wife, daughter, and unborn child would have caused.

  He didn’t choose his steps, but let his boots go in whatever direction they led him, in a northeasterly direction, past the fort to the south, and towards some end.

  ---

  Hogal couldn’t sleep because of the cold steel next to his hip, he decided about three hours after he had lay down on the small sofa made up into a bed for him by Mahrree. Exactly how did Perrin walk around all day with something this cold, sharp, and threatening against his hip?

  Hogal shifted the long knife frequently, trying to find a more comfortable position.

  For a time he tried lying on his back with the long knife in his fist resting on his chest, but he couldn’t decide which way the tip should be pointing.

  Up towards his face seemed most ominous, especially if he should fall asleep, awake with a sneeze, and forget what was clenched his hands.

  Pointing it downwards also seemed quite dangerous, for reasons his mind chose not to entertain for long.

  Facing it towards the sofa felt rude—what if he accidentally cut the cloth?

  And lying with the tip towards the door, and ready for anyone who may somehow barge through it, was simply too violent for the rector to consider.