by Brandon Barr
“I presume nothing,” shouted Grey Bear, his voice cutting rough like a saw. “I represent the sentiments of most of the men and women standing here this day. And on their behalf, I thank you for your change of heart, and your amending the contracts, but we have this one further demand. The Watch must be disbanded. No more intimidation. No more listening to our private lives. We shall say what we please without your royal ear listening from behind the fortress walls.”
The Baron drew his sword. “This is my land you farm, Grey Bear. I make the rules. I design the law. These were agreed to by you, or the oaf who spawned you. I have given you much today, but I can take it away as quick as a sword can remove your head from your neck.”
Aven noticed movement at the far end of the crowd. Soldiers were issuing forth from the blacksmith shop. These were not the Baron’s men, for they bore a strange flag with a sword passing through the eyes of a skull. A cry started at the back of the crowd. It grew louder and louder until every head had turned and saw the armed men, several hundred strong, moving to encircle them.
The Baron shouted, drawing the crowd’s eyes. “Farmspit like you, Grey Bear, is the reason the Watch exists, not these good farmers around you. They have nothing to fear. It is your kind that stirs up trouble amongst these good people. You want power, so you loose your tongue like a hungry leech and prey upon your neighbors, stirring up their fears. The only one who needs to fear is you, wretch.”
Grey Bear surged forward like a gentle bull, pushing farmers out of his path with huge tender hands. “I care nothing for power,” shouted Grey Bear, stopping before the platform. “It is only freedom I and my friends are after. Behind you sits Aven and Winter. Good farmers, just like their parents. But it was your Watch who murdered their mother and father and left them orphans. It is by examples like that, and a hundred other cruelties, that we demand the Watch be disbanded!”
Aven feared his friend’s boldness as much as he admired it. How much did the farmers care for the freedom Grey Bear was fighting for? Would they not have cheered, as Aven would have, at the Baron’s amendments? On the heels of gaining so much in terms of wealth and freedom to trade, the dissatisfaction they’d felt only an hour before must have been much harder to hold on to, and with hired soldiers surrounding them, what hope did they have?
“Many of you know Aven, son of Lynx, and Winter, daughter of Amethyst.” The Baron turned and gestured toward him and his sister. “These two lost their parents at the hands of an incompetent Captain of the Watch. That captain was put to death on the spot by my own hand. Aven here can swear to that, for the man’s life was demanded that very night in his presence. And yet, the irony is that, just yesterday, it was you, Grey Bear, trying to persuade Aven to join in a rebellion against me. Aven, being a man of honor, refused, and even warned you against your foolishness.”
Aven’s hands closed into fists over the horse’s reins. He’d agreed to be the Baron’s puppet for the day, and the Baron was using him to full advantage.
The Baron lifted his sword, “Today I have given recompense to you and to all my farmers. Today I will reward Aven and Winter with an honor greater than any given in this valley. And today, you, Grey Bear, and those who choose to stand beside you will see justice done. I declare you and any who join you, worthy of death.”
The Baron pointed his sword at Grey Bear. “All who wish to go to their grave with this man, come, stand before the platform.”
Almost immediately a space was formed in the front as the farmers backed away, leaving Grey Bear and only a few others standing alone. Many pushed forward through the crowd, only to stop and stand on the outskirts once they saw the hopelessness of the meager band standing together.
Stump, whom Aven had seen fingering his sword, was not among them. Neither was the girl from the East Vale with the knife. The Baron’s recompense, coupled with the hired swords, had quenched what little fire the farmers had felt an hour earlier.
Only ten stood with Grey Bear. Surprisingly, Rabbit was not among them.
Aven wondered at the madness of those eleven farmers. Did they have nothing to live for anymore? Aven imagined his life without Winter.
Grey Bear, he had Rabbit. Why was he so willing to become a corpse come sundown? Why surrender the fragile joy of love between him and his mate?
The horse between Aven’s legs snorted sharply, responding to the tension coursing through him. Aven turned toward Winter, hoping to find solace in her eyes.
His heart stopped. She was not on her horse.
_____
WINTER
Winter crept low, moving slowly between the soldiers’ horses, the sound of the Baron’s voice drawing all eyes but hers to the front of the stage. A vision had come to her moments ago, while still on her horse. A knife, dripping with blood, was held tight in the grip of its owner, one of the Baron’s soldiers. Beneath the knife lay Rabbit, green eyes staring up at the sky, lips parted, face relaxed, blood trailing from her right nostril.
The next thing Winter knew, she had slipped off her horse, intuitively aware of the direction she needed to go to find that weapon.
She crawled a few more paces and looked up. A knife dangled above her on a soldier’s pack. Her fingers trembled as she reached up and untied it from its leather strings. Gingerly sliding the hilt free, she slipped it into the folds of her cloak. Have I lost my mind? The knife tinked against the jar under her clothing as she awkwardly tucked the metal blade along her left sleeve. She removed the jar and found Whisper’s feeble feet clinging to the glass. A gentle tug pulled her thoughts outward, toward something, the blue wings opening as its spirit agitated Winter’s mind.
Winter fell softly to her hands and knees and stared out toward where the Baron stood, beyond a maze of muscled horse legs. It was like dreaming with eyes open, and once the pictures came, she couldn’t turn away. An image pushed through onto her mind’s eye. She saw hired soldiers drag eleven blood-slicked bodies into a line beneath the platform. Grey Bear was among the dead, his face spattered with blood, eyes much like Rabbit’s had been, open, staring up at the sky.
The Baron’s shout invaded the grisly vision as the present clashed with the future. “All who wish to go to their grave with this man, come, stand before the platform.”
Winter moved with a sense of urgency now, the Baron’s words driving her forward. She came beside the legs of the last horse separating her from the Baron. Her heart pounded in her throat. Reason screamed at her to stop her madness but her will drove her onward.
She had to use her gift. That meant trusting the Maker’s words.
Leaf, do you see me now? You promised.
Could she live with Rabbit dead, having done nothing? Could she face herself the next day, knowing eleven farmers might have lived if she’d acted?
Why Leaf entrusted her with such a terrifying duty she didn’t understand, but she knew this: if she didn’t do something, every vision that ended in death and tears would torment her until the day she died.
You’re being irrational! a voice screamed silently from within.
She bit her tongue so hard the pain killed her reason and she stood and marched across the platform. Her fingers found the leather grip of the knife in her sleeve and she clenched it tight, as if it were the neck of a snake. Ahead the Baron was pointing at the condemned men. Winter came beside him, concealing the knife from the farmers behind the Baron’s girth.
She lifted the Baron’s light chainmail shirt with the knife tip, then with force, pressed its sharp point into his naked back.
“Show them mercy, Lord Baron,” she said loudly.
A hush came over the crowd at her words, or perhaps the sight of her standing beside the Baron.
Rhaudius turned his head slightly in her direction. The fear paling his face was quickly chased away by a flush of fury.
“Remove the knife,” he whispered between clenched teeth, “and we can talk.”
She didn’t dare obey.
“The farmers don
’t see my weapon,” she whispered. “Declare your mercy upon those men, and show the farmers kindness.”
The Baron smiled for the farmers, apparently playing along with her for the moment. His voice came out in a low growl, for her ear’s only. “I give you your freedom. I give you employ with the Guardians, and this is how you repay me? I will take everything away and more if you don’t return to your horse. Now.” His last words came out in a hiss loud enough for those close by to hear.
Winter glanced behind her. A handful of soldiers had dismounted and stood on the platform, hands resting upon sword hilts, waiting for a command. Winter’s voice felt weak in her throat, as if she were still a peasant groveling for his pity. But that wouldn’t do. She needed to summon up a girl deep inside she barely knew—a girl who spoke a language that Rhaudius could understand.
She clenched the knife tight and pressed into the Baron more forcefully. “Give them mercy, or I swear you’ll be pissing on your liver.”
The Baron nodded and smiled for the farmers, paleness returning to his face. “Winter has made a noble request on behalf of these farmers standing here.”
He glanced sideways at her, and said quietly: “I’ll give the men’s families an extra portion of their profits, meat from my table and wine from my cellar. But I will not disband the Watch.”
Winter pushed on the knife. “Don’t be a coward. Turn the farmers into allies. Do it now, or I swear—”
A loud shout sounded on the platform behind her. She turned. Pike was on Aven’s horse, his sword drawn across her brother’s open mouth, pressing Aven’s head back against his chest. “Let my father go or I’ll add a finger width to your brother’s smile and carve him a mouth like a fish.”
Winter froze. She could hear mutterings and shouts from the crowd. Her ploy was up. They now knew it hadn’t been a conversation between her and the Baron, but a negotiation.
Something began to tug on her mind amidst the chaos. The pull of Whisper’s spirit. Her mind’s eye was suddenly awakened to a tree close by, where sat Rabbit. She was carefully hidden high in the branches of a bulge oak beside the platform, a bow string pulled taught with an arrow ready to fly.
Everything felt on the verge of exploding. With as little movement as possible, she swiftly retracted the knife from the Baron’s back and burrowed it in her cloak.
“You’re confused, Pike,” she called, raising her hands into the air for all to see, but careful to remain beside the Baron, lest Rabbit find an open shot. Rhaudius’s thin brows quivered as they probed her, wavering between outright fury and his better sense.
The Baron turned to face Pike, placing a hand in Winter’s long black hair and combed his fat fingers through it as if he were playing with a daughter’s tresses. “My son, you’re mistaken,” shouted Rhaudius. “Winter was merely asking that I kill these rebels quickly and not let them suffer. A very noble suggestion, isn’t that right, Winter?”
Her heart pounded in her brain, dizzying her thoughts. She stood on a precipice. Save her brother by condemning the eleven to die, or call the Baron out for the liar he was. She knew what Aven would do if it were her in jeopardy. He would save her and send the eleven to their grave, but she couldn’t stomach that. And what was the point of her vision placing her in this predicament if she weren’t to follow through somehow?
Curse the Baron—she had the support of the gods! She couldn’t cower back now. She wouldn’t allow herself to be the clean white cloth he needed to wipe his filthy, blood-stained excretions on. She’d given him a chance to show mercy and he’d refused. She wouldn’t play his game. She would relinquish her turn, and cast her lot into the wind.
“I said nothing like it!” shouted Winter, turning, finding Grey Bear’s eyes for a moment. The big man’s lips thinned into a sliver of a smile, but his face was bleak with concern. “I’m begging you, Baron Rhaudius,” she continued, “in front of these good farmers, have mercy on Grey Bear and the men beside him. Show our community grace, and we will forever remember this day.”
She reached out and took the Baron’s hands in hers and as a final gesture, took a knee and bowed her head as respectfully as she could manage.
She stared at his dusty leather boots and wondered what kind of message his eyes would hold if she dared look upon them.
“Rise child,” said the Baron, tugging her slowly to her feet. He kept one hand in hers and placed the other upon her back, turning them both to face the crowd of farmers. “Is she not the sweetest thing you ever saw?”
A shriek of pain escaped her lips as the Baron squeezed her fingers in bone crunching agony. The hand on her back pushed her forward with violent force, her feet lost their grip and she was airborne as the Baron released her hand. The ground spun as she plummeted head first from the platform. The ground was not far below, but in that instant of complete disorientation, streaks of colors and shapes blurring together, she saw a vision, and in it she was falling from a great distance and below was a frothing sea, thundering as it pounded the boulders with its waves. Below, as the waters came rushing toward her, she saw a man in dark wool clothing standing on the shore, hair wild and long. His bearded face looked up at her and he called out, “The pain will only last for this life.” The thunderous pounding faded away.
Her head and neck struck the ground at an angle, and then her back slammed against the ground, crushing the breath from her lungs. Her limbs tingled with fire. She told her body to move, to turn over onto her hands and knees to stand up, but she was unable to move even a finger. She gasped for air, drinking it in. Her heaving breaths became all encompassing, filling her ears above any other sound.
She stared up at the harsh blue sky; it was all she could do.
CHAPTER 24
AVEN
Aven slid his hand lightly over Pike’s belt, fighting the nauseous pain cutting his mouth, desperate for something he could use as a weapon.
Winter lay motionless on the ground but for the barely visible rise and fall of her chest. She was alone, and in how much pain, he didn’t know. With everything in him, he wanted to go to her.
“Two things I never thought I’d see,” said Pike in his ear. “Up your sister’s dress…and her thrown through the air like a doll. Delightful. Both of them.”
Aven clawed at Pike’s chain mail, but Pike only pressed harder against the knife in his mouth. The searing pain brought him to the edge of losing consciousness.
Pike’s lips brushed against Aven’s ear. “A peek at her squeak and a trip with a flip.” Pike chuckled from his throat, his breath hot in Aven’s ear.
“On the chance your sister is paralyzed for life after that fall, and I’m given permission to saw off your head, would you mind if I took her for a mate? I have this thing for plain-faced girls with bent noses. She could be like a little pet and I wouldn’t have to worry about her running away.”
Fire boiled through Aven’s veins. It was a burning he’d never felt before. Intense. Murderous. He didn’t just want to kill Pike, he wanted him to die in agony. Wanted to be the source of his pain.
Pike’s words. His cold-hearted callousness toward Winter’s condition. Aven knew instinctively the emotion roiling within his own heart.
Hatred.
True hatred. Tears rolled down Aven’s face. His blurred vision consumed with his sister’s crumpled form on the ground.
The Baron’s tongue lashed the air, breathing threats down upon the angry and emboldened farmers coming forward to join Grey Bear. Rhaudius’s raging voice was mere noise in Aven’s ears as he looked out at his sister in such a vulnerable, open position, either frozen with fear, or unable to move from injury. If the Baron should send the garrison to charge the farmers, their horses would trample her.
Aven’s probing fingers touched balled metal then moved down over a smooth leather grip. The handle of a sword or knife. He tugged on it, and it moved freely. Sliding it from its sheath, he felt its weight.
A knife.
The sickening words spoken i
n his ear compelled him onward just as much as the sword cutting his mouth. Aven swung the blade up, plunging its metal into Pike’s upper arm.
Pike’s scream tore the air and the sword biting the corners of Aven’s lips fell loose. Aven grabbed the reins with his newly freed hand as the crowd’s eyes turned to him and Pike. He kicked the horse with his heels and the steed sprang forward, dislodging Pike’s body from Aven’s and sending him rolling backward off the horse. A soldier ahead of Aven swung a sword at his head. Aven brought the knife up and leaned back, barely glancing away the fatal blow. The motion saved his life but in shifting backward he lost his balance. He squeezed his legs tight against the horse’s upper body, but the pounding of the powerful legs sent him airborne and he lost his hold on the knife. Tucking his head in his arms, he braced himself for the fall.
The impact rocked him and he hit the platform then tumbled off, falling onto the ground below. He stared down at the dirt and grass for only a moment, his body reporting to his surprise no serious pain or injury beyond the throbbing at the corners of his mouth, where he felt the wet trickle of blood running down his chin.
Winter.
He looked for her. She lay not far off, body in the same position, as if she were frozen there. Cold fingers gripped his soul. Something far more permanent than fear had immobilized her. A hush had come over the entire assembly, and it was as Aven crawled on hands and knees that he heard the Baron shout out like a squealing pig: “Kill them! Kill them all!”
Aven reached Winter and quickly looked into her eyes. She looked back at him and the faintest smile touched her lips. A burden too unbearable lifted off his heart. He tried to smile in return, but the pain at the corners of his mouth made him wince.
Barely moving his lips, he mumbled softly, “You didn’t doubt I’d come for you, did you?”
She gave a long blink as an answer.
A shout from the platform drew his eyes up to see Rose beside the Baron, signaling the mounted soldiers forward to the edge of the platform. Aven glanced back at the farmers. All held crude weapons no longer concealed in their cloaks. Grey Bear stood in the front, a large, dark sword in one hand and a small spiked shield in the other.