Raven’s Rise

by Cole, Elizabeth

  “Because where we are is exactly where I don’t want to be.” Rafe’s voice grew louder as he spoke. He looked around the peaceful scene, as if expecting something terrible to be revealed.

  “What’s around here?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he snapped. “No other roads, no towns, no easy way around those hills unless we go east and then we’ll spend days getting back to a proper road south. Damn.”

  “What’s to the west?” Goswin asked. “The path looks well-traveled.”

  “That’s a royal forest, then a few towns, and then Wales. We’re not going that way. How did we get here?” he added, to himself. “We came too far west.”

  “Rafe?” Angelet asked, concerned.

  “Just give me a moment,” he said in a distracted tone. “I need to think. There may be another road that leads away…”

  He turned Philon around in a circle, scanning the forest. “Stay here.” Rafe rode for a few hundred yards along the path leading east.

  Goswin edged closer to Angelet. “What’s he so angry about?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “He doesn’t like this part of the country.” She kept her gaze on Rafe, who’d turned about and was riding back to them, with a stormy expression.

  Thus, she didn’t know why Goswin suddenly shouted in alarm, or why someone hit her hard in the chest, almost knocking her off her horse. She clutched at the reins to keep her place.

  “What was that?” she gasped out.

  No one answered.

  Goswin was screaming, “Over there, over there!” as Rafe rushed past her and rode on to something beyond her.

  Angelet turned to look, but didn’t see anything more than the hazy wash of green leaves comprising the edge of the woods by the road. She blinked, trying to clear her eyes. What was the matter with them? Her vision wavered as if she was crying, and why would she be crying?

  She took a deep breath, and felt a strange heat all over the front of her body. Then she looked down and saw why. The back half of a crossbow bolt stuck out of her chest. The warmth she’d felt was fresh blood, now soaking through the wool of her gown. “Oh.”

  She put her hand to the protruding bolt, more in wonder than in fear. How very, very strange, she thought, her mind still rather hazy. This is something Rafe would have an opinion on.

  “Rafe?” she called out. Only a rush of breathy air made it out, and the name was only a whisper.

  She tried again. “Rafe?” A little louder that time. What was he up to?

  Hoofbeats pounded in her ears. Someone rushed up to her, reining in at the last moment.

  “Got him,” Rafe said, gripping his sword in his right hand, the blade looking red in the light. “I don’t know how the hell he got this close to us, but he’s never…”

  Rafe stopped talking when he inched forward and got a look at her. His face went white. “You were hit.”

  She tried to nod, but her head suddenly felt very heavy, and she slumped forward, lost her balance, and fell.

  Chapter 22

  As soon as Rafe heard Goswin yell, he cursed in frustration. The moment he turned his back, something bad happened. He knew it.

  The boy was waving his arms frantically, urging Rafe to hurry. Angelet had ridden a few paces to the south, and now faced away from Rafe. She was seemingly unconcerned by Goswin’s behavior. That was a little odd in itself. From the moment she saw Goswin, she took to him as if she had been charged with his care. Rafe had chalked it up to her missing her own child and wanting to help another in his place. But now she didn’t even look over at Goswin.

  Rafe spurred his horse and covered the distance in no time.

  “What is it?” he asked Goswin.

  “Over there, over there!” he shrieked, pointing to a spot in the woods. “Someone shot at us! I saw the bolt fly right past my nose!”

  Following the line of Goswin’s outstretched finger, he peered into the trees.

  “I’ll find them!” Goswin shouted. His pony was already in motion, riding down the road parallel to the trees.

  “Goswin!” Rafe shouted. “Don’t! Stay back here with Angelet!”

  The boy ignored his order.

  Cursing again, Rafe rode directly into the trees along the line the boy had indicated.

  Branches whipped out at him as he plunged into the newly-green woods. Seconds later, Rafe spotted a big man who was fully armed and ready to fight, based on the fact that he held a sword in one hand and a long dagger in the other. Several feet behind him, a crossbow lay on the ground.

  That was all Rafe needed to know.

  He howled a challenge even as he drew his own sword. It was not fair that Rafe was mounted while his opponent was on foot, but then again, it wasn’t fair that the man shot at an unarmed woman. Thus, Rafe felt absolutely no compunction about holding the advantage. He intended to give the other man no quarter at all.

  The other man didn’t ask for any. He braced himself against the wide trunk of a tree and yelled a few insults about the unsavory sexual habits of Rafe’s mother. As it happened, those insults had no effect on Rafe, because he had no idea what sort of person his mother was.

  So his mind was clear and cold when he charged the man’s position. The man seemed as though he was going to stand his ground, but Rafe had long since learned to read body language, and he was unsurprised when his opponent skittered over to the other side of the tree, hoping to block Rafe’s right-handed attack.

  At a distance of twenty paces, he subtly angled his horse’s path slightly away from the tree, he swapped his sword into his left hand, and swept it in a wide flat circle just about level with the man’s chest.

  The mercenary raised his own sword to block the stroke, and a tremendously loud clang rang out when the two blades connected.

  The man grunted, and Rafe knew why. His arm would be numb with pain right now, having taken much more of the impact of the blow than Rafe had. Rafe pulled hard on the reins to circle around the tree. He then switched the sword back to his right arm, which was perfectly sound.

  The other man sensed Rafe coming, and turned to face him again. But Rafe now not only had the advantage of height, he also had a strong sword arm and more experience.

  “One chance to live,” Rafe said. “Throw your weapons down and tell me who hired you, and why.”

  The man only tightened his grip on his blades.

  Rafe gave the man a more careful appraisal. Everything about him said he was a professional, and that he wasn’t going to go as far as attempting to kill someone only to give himself up now. This man was never going to talk. He wouldn’t reveal his employer or tell Rafe how he’d tracked him. He’d rather die.

  Rafe could accommodate that.

  He dismounted, springing down to the ground several paces from the other man, who was so surprised that Rafe gave up his advantage that he hesitated for a moment, which was a moment too long.

  Rafe executed a series of moves so familiar to him that he could do them asleep. His opponent was a competent fighter, and parried well for the first few thrusts. However, Rafe didn’t just follow a learned sequence—he always adapted to his opponents’ response. He had a knack for seeing a fighter’s move an instant before it actually occurred. Some people thought it uncanny, and it was the primary reason why Rafe kept winning battles—few things surprised him.

  This time was no different. The man’s actions seemed clumsy to Rafe, as though he was moving through mud while Rafe moved through air. The conclusion was inevitable, and when Rafe saw an opening, he took it without thinking twice.

  His sword pierced through the other man’s lower torso, just below the edge of his breastplate. Rafe retracted it instantly, confident in the result.

  Sure enough, his opponent dropped his own weapons to clutch at the wound, desperate to keep his guts inside his body.

  “You bastard,” he hissed out.

  “Yes, I know,” said Rafe. “I’ve just killed you, but you have a while before you die. Hours. Maybe
a day. Did you have anything to declare? Please skip the confessions. I’m not qualified to forgive.”

  “Go to hell.” The other man sank to his knees, his face paling as blood began to seep through his fingers.

  Rafe shrugged. “That’s all you have to say? Goodbye then.” He turned to fetch Philon, who’d only gone a little ways away, being very used to noise and violence.

  “You can’t leave me to die!” the other man said.

  “I can. I will. Unless you tell me something useful.”

  “And you’ll take me to a village?”

  “No,” Rafe explained. “I’ll finish you off quickly. Choice is yours.”

  The other man grimaced as some great pain rolled over him. He seemed to be having some realization of his change in fortune. Rafe always wondered at the sort of soldier this man was. They thought they were invincible right up to the moment death took them. Rafe always knew how close death was. Though he put on a show of nonchalance, he respected the deadliness of a sword.

  The man opened his mouth, about to say something, when he suddenly hunched over in pain and coughed up blood all over the ground.

  Rafe sighed, seeing the signs of a brutal ending. “Very well,” he said, more to himself than to the man. “Though he doesn’t deserve it.”

  To the man, Rafe said, “Straighten up. Now!”

  He followed the order, though it obviously hurt to do so. He faced Rafe on his knees.

  “What’s your name?” Rafe asked.

  “Morton.”

  “Close your eyes, Morton.”

  The man did. Rafe took a step forward and swung the sword in an arc. A red line colored Morton’s neck, and then he slid to the ground, dead.

  Rafe quickly checked the body for any indication of where he might have come from or who he might know, but found nothing. Just as he expected.

  He glanced at the crossbow, then stomped down hard on it, breaking the mechanism. He turned back to the corpse, intending to snap the remaining crossbow bolts in two, but he didn’t see any. Had that bolt been the only one the man had? Strange.

  Rafe seized Philon’s reins, mounted up, and returned to the crossroads. In all, the fight lasted less than a minute.

  Angelet was still there, alone. She sat on her horse, staring at the hill to the south. It was not an interesting hill, and Rafe didn’t like her silence.

  “Got him,” Rafe told her, still gripping his sword. “I don’t know how the hell he got this close to us, but he’s never…”

  Rafe trailed off, seeing that Angelet held her hand to her chest in an unnatural way, and that the front of her gown was deep red.

  He felt his heart go cold. “You were hit.”

  She began to slide off the horse. Rafe dismounted and rushed to catch her before she hit the ground. He pulled her into his arms and put her gently down onto the road, keeping her upper body cradled against him.

  “Rafe,” she said softly. “What do I do?”

  “Just stay calm,” he told her. “I’ll take care of you. I need cloth. Where the hell is that boy? Goswin!”

  He thought he heard the hooves of Goswin’s pony but couldn’t be bothered to wait. He kept his attention on Angelet. “How’s the pain?”

  “Not very much,” she said.

  “That’s common. The pain comes after, but it’s nothing you can’t endure.”

  “There’s so much blood.”

  “I know.” God, he knew that. Far too much blood. “But don’t worry. The bleeding is already slowing and soon you’ll be bandaged up.” Lies, lies, lies.

  She closed her eyes.

  “No, no. Stay awake, love. I’ll deal with this.” He kept his voice low, to keep her calm and to stop the shaking he felt when he saw the location of the bolt, jutting out of her rib cage at a disturbing angle. If the shaft punctured her lungs or her heart, he’d lose her in moments.

  “Just breathe,” he told her. If she couldn’t breathe without coughing, or if there was blood on her mouth, it was over. And Rafe could not accept that.

  The clatter of hooves stopped abruptly and then Goswin was there in the dirt with them, his expression horrified. “She was struck!”

  “Goswin!” Rafe yelled, furious at the world and needing to take it out on someone. “You rode ahead when I ordered you to stop. Do you know how stupid that was? Don’t ever do that again.”

  The boy looked a little chastened by Rafe’s vehemence. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry won’t stop you from getting killed. There could have been more than one person!”

  “There was! I saw someone running away!” Goswin reported breathlessly. “I couldn’t catch them though. The underbrush was too thick. But they definitely came from where that shot was fired.”

  “Damn,” Rafe muttered. That was another bad sign. It meant that the person who escaped could easily inform their partners what happened and where to go. “We can’t stay here.”

  “You want to move her?” Goswin said.

  “Yes! Now go look in our gear for something to stop this bleeding. Cloth or something. Christ.” The boy scrambled up and disappeared.

  Rafe lowered her so she lay on the ground.

  Angelet reached up with one hand, grazing his face with the tips of her fingers. “You’re so angry.”

  “Of course I’m angry!”

  “It’s bad for me, isn’t it?” she asked. It was the most lucid statement she’d made so far.

  “No, love. The blood makes it look worse,” he told her. In truth, it did look bad, but telling Angelet that wouldn’t help at all. “Trust me, it just needs a bandage and some time. It will heal.”

  “If it does not…”

  “It will.”

  Goswin was back then, thrusting a few wads of fabric at him. “Here! Use these!”

  Rafe took one and almost pressed it to Angelet’s chest when he realized it was her altar cloth. “Jesu,” he muttered, snatching it back. He gave it to Goswin. “Keep that one clean!”

  He took the other wad, which turned out to be his only spare shirt. He ripped one sleeve off, then hesitated. He needed to take the bolt out and then block the wound with the cloth. That would hurt her.

  “Angelet,” he said. “I’m going to do something now. It will hurt, but it’s necessary.”

  “I trust you,” she breathed.

  Rafe told Goswin, “Tear the rest of that shirt into strips. Use your dagger. And don’t look if you’ll get sick!”

  Goswin nodded, his eyes wide.

  Rafe laid one hand on Angelet’s chest, the protruding bolt between his thumb and forefinger. He took hold of the bolt with his other hand, and prayed. Then he yanked the bolt out.

  Angelet’s choked off gasp of pain was the worst sound he’d ever heard.

  “It’s done, love,” he said, pressing the dry cloth to her chest. “I’m so sorry. But the worst is done.”

  “It’s not,” she murmured, her eyes suddenly dark, the pupils widening.

  “Listen, you’ll recover. I promise,” he added recklessly.

  “Rafe, no,” she said. “It’s not the wound.”

  “What is it?”

  “I feel so strange. I think I’m about to…” she trailed off.

  “Angelet? Angelet. Stay awake.” Rafe said urgently. But she couldn’t answer. Her face took on a slack appearance. Her eyes remained open, but he doubted she could see anything. It was very similar to how she looked when he first found her in the church at Dryton. Angelet told him that the seizures rarely occurred close together, but the violence of her injury must have triggered one.

  She stiffened in his arms, her body falling prey to the seizure in her mind. Rafe never felt more helpless, watching Angelet be attacked by something he couldn’t even see.

  “Angelet! Say something if you can. Anything. Please!”

  She said nothing, and her body twisted further.

  Rafe took the new shreds of cloth Goswin gave him, and began to bind the cloth to her body by wrapping the longest stri
ps about her.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Goswin asked urgently.

  “She took a crossbow bolt in her chest, for God’s sake!”

  “That doesn’t explain why she’s staring at nothing and can’t talk. What else is wrong with her?”

  “Goswin, shut up.”

  “What if they smeared poison on the tip of the bolt? That happens.”

  Oh, Lord. Rafe didn’t need something else to worry about. “Goswin, shut up.”

  Goswin did for a moment, but then said, “The lady needs help. We must find a physician, or a wise woman, at least.”

  “We can’t stop anywhere. You saw someone get away, and we have to assume they’ll be back with more friends. All they need is for us to stop moving. They’ll attack as soon as they catch up.”

  “You can defeat them!”

  “I don’t know how many there are,” Rafe explained wearily. “One man against many rarely ends well for the one man.”

  “But she told me you’re the finest fighter in Britain!”

  Rage only shook his head. “Won’t help against an archer. Or if one of them slips past and kills Angelet while I fight the others.”

  “There must be a safe place around here. A place that would protect a lady. Someplace the others can’t get in.”

  Rafe took a breath. As Goswin spoke, the image of the right place came to him. And the road to get there was the one he’d just refused to travel down.

  “Jesu,” he muttered. What a trick of fate. The only place Angelet would be safe was the one place he couldn’t dare go.

  “Sir Rafe?” the boy asked. “What is it?”

  Rafe wanted to strike out in frustration, but there was no enemy about…only his own past folly. “God hates me,” he said. “It’s the only explanation.”

  “Sir?”

  “All right, Goswin. There’s a place we can go. It will be a vicious hard ride to get there, but both you and she will be safe once we arrive.”

  “What about you, Sir Rafe?”

  “No time to explain.”

  So they rode. Rafe knew every turn and every stretch of road. Even though he avoided the whole shire for years, it was where he grew up, and the landmarks remained anchored in his soul. The hunched back of Waterstone Clee to the east, the twist of the river that would join the Severn miles downstream, the massive trunk of a lightning-stuck oak tree at the crossroads north of Bournham, the little village closest to the manor of Cleobury. They were all there, and guided Rafe as he rushed toward the one place he didn’t want to see.