Sanctuary Tales (Book 1)

by Robert J. Crane

  Three

  Martaina slipped back under the heavy canopy of the Iliarad’ouran Woods a short time later after traversing the wide fields around Nethan’s plantation at a run. She wasn’t even close to being out of breath by the time she reached the far edge of the field, feeling the shade of the leaves on the massive trees block the sun from her face as she quickened her pace. The woods were home, and the camp was not far away. Had been for weeks. The available land of the Iliarad’ouran was shrinking by the year, a slow, inevitable tightening of their bounds.

  Martaina tried not to think of that as she ran along, making little noise as she jumped over tree trunks, dodged roots and slipped around the trunks of the enormous trees. The smell of greenery was thick in the air, the fresh morning scent of the Iliarad’ouran Woods. She caught a whiff of something and paused before running up the root of a tree that extended some five hundred feet into the air above her. She edged along the side of the trunk, the patches of rough bark caressing her hand as she pulled her bow off her shoulder and nocked an arrow, all without having actually seen an animal yet.

  She took another sniff, more quietly this time, and she smelled it again. A deer. She eased around the trunk, letting one eye slip out from behind cover first. Her quarry was there, unaware, the deer quartered away from her. It was a fat doe, big bodied and wild, like she’d come to expect here in the Iliarad’ouran Woods. And why should it not be? They were plentiful, hunted only by her people and the occasional group from Pharesia at the King’s behest. Planters were commanded to leave them be, even though they were a nuisance to the crops.

  Martaina eased out further, preparing her shot. She was so quiet that there was nary a sound for her prey to be aware of, and the animal kept eating, the light fal’thes grass that grew in a patch where the canopy was broken overhead making only the slightest ruffle as the doe disturbed it. This is a chance to redeem myself for my late start. Plentiful though they were, the deer of the Iliarad’ouran Woods were still canny, cagey creatures that kept perpetually on the run, and catching one upwind was still a pleasant surprise, especially this early in the day.

  She felt the tension of the string as she drew back her bow. She made shots like this every day, both in practice and against an animal of some kind, though not always such a ripe one as this. She let her other eye slide out from behind the tree trunk, now gauging her distance to the target, and raised the bow just slightly to compensate. She aimed behind the shoulder, the big broadhead tip on the arrow designed to tear through meat and keep the animal from escaping too far. That was bad for both her and the animal; a slow, painful death for it and the chance of escape to somewhere she might not be able to retrieve it. Both concerns were pressing, but as her stomach rumbled she knew which concerned her more.

  The arrow flew through the air with a sharp whistle, and she watched it sail a little forward into the front right shoulder of the doe. The reaction was immediate: the doe bolted but her injured leg failed, causing the animal to stumble. Martaina followed the arrow with another, but this one she fumbled slightly in her excitement. It went high and through the top of the back as she grimaced. The tenderloin, she thought, I just shredded it. Father will not be pleased. The arrow stuck out of its back and the doe fell to the ground, then flopped in the long grass, legs flailing in the air as the animal bucked once, twice, then lay still.

  Martaina kept her distance and listened again to the rumble in her stomach. She knew even with the animal at hand she was still hours from being able to eat, hours of preparation and cooking. With a sigh, letting out the tension that had been been building within her since she’d left Nethan behind, she eased forward toward the carcass, pulling her knife as she did so. She didn’t really want to drag the entire weight of the creature back to the camp, so she set about the business of leaving the heavy, useless parts behind. She opened up the deer along the belly, the smell being something she’d never become used to. She blanched at the stink of feces and half-digested grass. She held her sleeve up to her nose with one hand as she made selective cuts with the other, then reached in with both and dragged the guts and stomach out, leaving them on the ground. She tied a quick sling with little bit of rope she had in her pack and began to drag the doe across the uneven ground.

  Her legs burned with the effort as she pulled the animal through the woods, sticking to the trail she’d begun to make over the last few months, the straight line between camp and the plantation. She would have sworn she never followed it exactly, but looking at the foliage, she realized there was a clear pattern, that she had left all the signs to give anyone interested in tracking her a very visible reminder of where she spent her nights when she wasn’t in camp. Not that anyone cares. She reconsidered that. Not that anyone cares enough to mention it.

  She crested a low rise, straining under the weight of the animal she was dragging. She could feel the beads of sweat popping out on her forehead, settling over the layer that she’d already accumulated in the evening and the first thing in the morning. This was the sweat of labor, though, not of simple, pleasurable gyration. Her muscles were accustomed to fast, lithe movement that came from carrying her lean frame from place to place. Dragging animals alone was not something she usually did, not over distances such as this. Not when there were animals closer to camp that didn’t require such intensive labor. Still, the doe was a good prize, and it had practically wandered into her path. It would feed them for some time, and some of the pieces would be useful for other endeavors.

  There was noise over the last crest as she came to the top of a small hill, and she knew the camp was not far. It was usually a quiet place, with only the three of them now. Unless there was—

  Martaina dropped her burden, let the rope roll right off her shoulder, and pounded her feet against the worn-down trail that she’d made over the last months, going into a full-out run down the slight hollow ahead of her and then up again to find herself just outside camp. She jumped up onto an exposed root that stood three feet above the ground and grasped her bow, holding off on nocking an arrow as she let her eyes watch the scene before her unfold.

  “It’s the King’s land,” the guardsman said—she’d met him before, his name was Hesshan—looking at her father while waving a finger in the older man’s face.

  “The woodsmen have had the right of hunting on these lands for generations,” Martaina’s father—she thought of him less as father and more by his name, Amalys—replied, his long, bedraggled beard hiding his utter lack of interest in the conversation, “since long before there was a bloody King, a Kingdom, or any of the other things you’ve got carved upon that breast of yours so you can beat them with pride every night.” He gestured at the boiled leather cuirass that the guardsman wore, metal etchings placed around the breastplate of it denoting his unit insignia.

  “Your right of hunting was never guaranteed by any document or proclamation that King Danay has ever made,” the guardsman said smugly. Still, his hand went unconsciously to his armor, stroking the etchings with his chainmail glove.

  “Well, why don’t you have your King come out here and tell me how I’m stealing his game?” Amalys looked at the guardsman with barely disguised disinterest, his hand falling to his big belly and rubbing it like he had an itch right around the middle of it.

  “The King has better things to do than deal with poaching, layabout scum,” Hesshan said, his winged helm catching a reflected light. He had three compatriots with him, all of them shuffling behind him.

  “Now I’m scum, am I?” Amalys’s ire was barely visible as he stared at the guardsman, but Martaina could see it there. “For living off the lands the way my ancestors did? For refusing to become a servant or a cultivator on a farm, bowing to your King’s dictates to produce so he can take half of the grain I harvest? Half the herds I raise?” Amalys spat on the ground between them, the shadow of the canopy above breaking long enough to cast him in a beam of light. “I’ll take my living from the forest as I always have, thank you ver
y much. Subject to no man, and no man subject to me.”

  “You are subject to the King,” Hesshan said grimly, with an aura of menace. Now his hand danced closer to the blade at his belt, lingering close to the hilt. Martaina coughed, clearing her throat, and the guardsmen, Hesshan and his three compatriots looked up all at once. Her arrow was now nocked and aimed at Hesshan’s head. She was ready to shoot him as she had the doe. He’d probably die faster, though. With a stir of surprise, she realized she was pointing her bow at a living elf, a person, and she felt a subtle tremor run through her hand that she tried to conceal from sight.

  “It’s against the laws to threaten a guardsman of the Kingdom,” Hesshan said, his ruddy face flushing with anger. His hand still hovered near the hilt of his sword.

  “I’m not threatening you,” Martaina said in a clear voice. “I’m aiming at the raccoon behind you.”

  Hesshan shuffled, uncertain, then looked back for just a moment. “I don’t see any raccoon.”

  “With your city eyes always so focused on kissing the arse of your immediate superior, I’m surprised you can see anything farther away than a hands-length,” Martaina said coolly, drawing a snicker from Amalys. She didn’t know for a fact that the guardsman spent any time kissing up to his superior, but she’d heard Nethan say as much happened constantly in Pharesia, that it was just a fact of the bureaucracy, and the only way to ever advance was by currying favor.

  “I see the raccoon,” another voice boomed out on the clearing, high and loud, drawing the attention of the guardsmen. Gareth appeared from just behind a fallen log of a smaller tree, only a couple feet in diameter. Martaina smiled as he appeared, and he shot her a reckless grin from behind his own bow, arrow ready to fly. “It seems to follow this one around,” he gestured at Hesshan, “incessantly, as though he smells particularly fascinating.” He squinted. “Hmm. You know what? Upon further examination, I believe that may in fact be a skunk, likely attracted by the smell of this one’s hindquarters.”

  Martaina found that didn’t merit much more than a small chuckle, but Hesshan flushed. “You think you can threaten us, you Iliarad’ouran freeloaders? You leeches, cozied up to the skin of whatever beast you can find to draw blood from?”

  “And thus we reach the end of your knowledge about the natural world,” Gareth wisecracked, still looking down the shaft of the arrow he had leveled at the guardsmen. Being older, he had far more skill with his bow than Martaina and could shoot faster even than she. “Perhaps for your next analogy you could compare us to something you're more familiar with – like the bakers who make bread in your city.”

  “You leeches couldn’t afford bread in my city,” Hesshan shot back, undaunted by the arrows gleaming in the low light of the forest eaves. “Your kind has no place in our Kingdom. You’re the lowest of the low, the last vestiges of forest-dwelling savages of ages past. You’re out of time, out of place, and your day is drawing to a close.” He jerked his hand away from the hilt of his sword. “Kill us, they’ll send more. Your pitch is narrowing, and the time’s coming where you won’t be allowed free lease of these lands anymore.”

  “You’ll drag us out of these woods good and cold and dead,” Amalys said. “We’ve been living here in the Iliarad’ouran all our lives, and the lives of our fathers, and all the generations past ’til those days no one can even remember. We’ll take our meat fresh from the day’s kill, our milk is the forest’s stream, and our life is as large as we care to live it. No matter how much your Kingdom grows, no matter how pretty and civilized your lot becomes, eschewing the hard work of the hunt for the easy slaughter of a cow’s haunch and goat’s milk on the table in the hovel your King says your class is allowed to buy.” Amalys cleared his throat and spat again, taking care to avoid Hesshan’s boots. Martaina was certain she would not have afforded the arrogant guardsman the same courtesy. “Now get out of here before my impetuous youths let go of their arrows along with their good judgment.”

  Hesshan looked like he wanted to answer, but he didn’t, instead shuffling slowly away, a few steps at a time, from Amalys, making no threatening moves but alternating his gaze from Gareth to Martaina in turn. “All right, then.”

  “And tell your King there are three of us here,” Amalys said, almost spitting again. “If he can honestly discern how the three of us are impacting his bloody game stock in these woods, I’ll move off the land myself and become one of his thrice-damned farmers.” Amalys made a sound low in his throat. “As if King Danay has ever even set foot in these woods with a bow in his hands.”

  Hesshan said nothing more, and with a last spiteful look, he and his guardsmen shuffled off, back toward the path that Martaina knew was still up above the hill. She and Gareth watched them the whole way, never moving their arrows off target until they were out of sight.

  “That skunk’ll be back, you know,” Gareth said, all trace of his confidence and recklessness gone, replaced by deep-etched lines of worry.

  “He always does wander back,” Amalys said, his face unburdened by this like it was as casual a proclamation as the weather turning sunny. “I suppose we should move our camp again, make it more difficult for him for a piece, until he wises up and sniffs us out again.” He surveyed the area around him, the tents still pitched in the little flat space next to a brook. “Well, come on then,” he said, and it was all command, “let’s get our home moved up and gone.”

  Four

  They packed up and moved within a quarter hour, their few possessions easily hauled off in a canvas sack apiece. Martaina let Gareth drag a sling specially designed for the deer as they trudged along, making their way west through the Iliarad’ouran Woods as the sun shone overhead, searching out the gaps between the boughs and leaves to shine down slivers of sunlight on the forest floor.

  Gareth was a handsome enough fellow, Martaina had always thought. He’d been ever-present during her raising, though, and felt like a brother more than anything, though they were not related by blood. His brow was plainly troubled now and Martaina could see his countenance darken with every step they took from the last campsite. It was the third they’d chosen in the last few months, the wild, unchecked areas of the forest diminishing by the day as loggers and guards came to put the claim in for more and more land around Pharesia for the King.

  “He knows,” Gareth said under his breath as they followed behind Amalys a ways. Martaina’s father made his way with a walking stick, an exaggerated limp hobbling his movement. She’d watched it disappear in camp, when he paid little attention to it, then saw it become more pronounced whenever it was mentioned. As a consequence, he carried the walking stick with him often, though he rarely leaned on it in practice outside of the camp. Not that he got out of camp much anymore. “About your nightly predations with the farmer,” Gareth said.

  “And that should concern me?” Martaina said, speaking low, matching Gareth’s hushed whisper. She was well over the age of maturity, and the idea of her father worrying himself over her taking a lover should have been laughable. Still, she felt nervous tension at the thought. She hadn’t done much to hide her affair, feeling almost rebellious about it. So what if he knows? I’m plenty old enough, and still do all my work, my cleaning. It’s my leisure time.

  “I don’t know if it should concern you,” Gareth said, eyeing her impassively. “That’s between you and your father.”

  “He won’t say anything if he hasn’t already,” she said, kicking up a pile of leaves as she passed through it, suddenly unconcerned about passing undisturbed. “Not that it’s any of his business. We’re still fed, and I still do my part.” She felt a flush in her cheeks. “More than him, anyway.” Gareth said nothing to this, the burden on his back forcing him to lean forward as he walked, like a gnarled tree tilting away from a furious wind. “You disagree?” she asked.

  “I think it little concerns me,” Gareth said. “But I thought you should be aware that he knows.”

  “Has he said anything to you?”

 
; “Little enough,” Gareth said, and his quicksilver smile appeared. “I believe he might have made mention of something as I came into camp this morning myself.”

  “Why, Gareth,” Martaina said, suddenly unable to control a grin, “were you away all night as well?”

  “I may have been,” Gareth said, his lips pursed, insufferably pleased.

  “Is this how a woodsman of the Iliarad’ouran comports himself?” she asked, still speaking in low tones, but her hushed voice was more than a little mocking. “Sneaking out in the hours of the night to meet a lover, probably sleeping in a soft bed instead of on the hard ground the way you were raised to, eating city food and being desirous of all the little material treasures that bind the city folk to their permanent hovels and unchained slavery?”

  “You sound like your father,” Gareth said with a smirk, “though it loses a bit of its luster without the conviction spread heavy on every word. Also, the fact that you spend your nights sweating under the loins of a farmer is a bit of a blow to your credibility on the subject.”

  “He’s not much of a farmer,” Martaina said. “More of a planter, really.”

  “Oh?” Gareth said, his smirk undimmed. “That means he merely watches while his lessers do the farming, doesn’t it?”

  She let her head bob as she felt heat unrelated to the shining sun beaming down on her head. “More or less.”

  “This will do,” Amalys pronounced as they reached a low dip next to the creek they’d followed. By Martaina’s guess they’d traversed something approaching seven miles, though it was hardly precise. She looked unconsciously to the east, trying to calculate how much additional time she’d have to spend walking to and from Nethan’s plantation. She frowned. It wasn’t favorable.