“It would appear that both you and I are ill-considered in your father’s plans,” Gareth muttered under his breath.
“If he does indeed know,” Martaina replied, equally quietly, “I’d say we were well-considered in his plans to move camp. After all, why make anything easier on us?”
“True enough,” Gareth replied, “as we are the last of those who do the work around here.” He shrugged the ropes off his shoulders, letting them fall to the earth as he stretched, pushing his arms to the sky as he squinted, as though he could somehow work the knots Martaina knew he was experiencing out of his muscles by simple stretching.
“Think about it,” Martaina said, shifting back and forth on her long legs, “if we left to pursue other options, he might have to go out and do the hunting work for himself.”
“He might indeed,” Amalys rumbled as he turned back to them, causing Martaina to exchange a shocked, wide-eyed look with Gareth. “And you know what that would mean? Plumper animals, prompter breakfasts, not having to wait for you lot to come dragging in from whatever soft and fluffy bed you’ve been laying about in the night before.” He stomped over to them. “I don’t have to explain myself to you; this is how it’s been for the elders of the woodsmen since time immemorial. The young hunt and pay their homage to the old because they’re more capable of it.” His face was like a mask of iron, forged anger under cooled rage. “We are the last of the Iliarad’ouran elves, the last of our kind to follow our ancient ways—”
“The last of us to follow our outmoded ideas,” Martaina tossed out, blistering with sarcasm and feeling her own surprise as she said it, “to sit around campfires at night, sleeping on a hard dirt bed while the rest of the Kingdom sleeps in proper ones.”
Amalys’s face went from angry to shocked in a heart’s beat. “And plays slave to their King as well. Is that what you want? To be one of his sheep, doing his bidding so you can give away half of what you spend your days toiling on?”
“It might be worth the trade,” Martaina said rather archly, trying to pull back her surprise at mouthing off. That’s not like me. Not at all. “Living in a house that’s not a lean to, not having to worry about being rained on or living in a cave when the torrential downpours of spring and summer come along, maybe working your way to having servants who could do menial chores for you—”
“You,” Amalys said, “aren’t of the sort that would ever get a servant of your own. The Kingdom you speak of is a carefully constructed farce; those born low never climb higher. And, my girl, you can’t get any lower than being born a woodsman of Iliarad’ouran.” His face darkened. “You may think that it’d be nice to live in a manor or on a farm, but they’ll never let you have it. Not ever, no chance.”
Martaina bit back her bitter desire to spit in his face that she would have it, without doubt. “How would you know?” she asked instead, letting her voice drop to cooler than the running creek on a winter’s morn. “You’ve never ventured beyond the borders of the woods to find out what it’s like.”
Amalys’s eyes flashed with anger. “Go ahead and leave then. Not for a night, or for a week, but for good. Go seek your fortunes, see how it works for you out there.” He waved his hand toward the borders of the woods, somewhere beyond their sight. “You’ll be back and begging to never leave again within a fortnight.”
Martaina said nothing. I won’t rise to his goad. I won’t make a rash decision, no matter how much I want to throw it into his face.
“I thought not,” Amalys said after a moment, clearly unimpressed. “Well, go on, then. Get the camp together.” He walked a half pace away then turned back. “After all, daylight’s burning.” He paced off, his walking stick cast aside and forgotten, without a hint of a limp.
“I didn’t think you’d actually say that to him,” Gareth whispered a moment later.
“Neither did I,” Martaina replied, feeling a burning in her throat from all the words she wished she’d been brave enough to say but hadn’t. “Neither did I.”
Five
The campfire blazed with near-smokeless wood, and Martaina sat next to it, the deer on a spit and roasting as the sun’s light began to die. Amalys had disappeared shortly after their argument, not a word more said. The chirp of insects in the air was loud as dusk grew into darkness, and the shadows of the trees went longer and longer with each passing minute. The canopy above them shrouded them from seeing the sky save for just a hint of purple between boughs here and there. Martaina rolled the spit idly with one hand while Gareth sang a simple song almost under his breath.
“Ye old maid of Iliarad’ouran
Walks the woods with mournful heart
She knows well her love betrayed her
And soon enough she’ll lay her down.
Gloom of woods, and fog of bleakness
Dusk’s last cry shall call her forth
Give her respite from her sadness
A moment’s pause in life forlorn.”
“Lay off,” Martaina said, sending Gareth a thin-lipped look of annoyance. “Unless you want to find this spit up your backside, rolling you over the flames.”
Gareth’s surprise turned to an instant grin. “Bit touchy, are we? You’ve never minded my singing before.”
“That song is depressing,” Martaina replied, looking at the flesh of the animal on the spit, the flames gradually cooking the meat and filling the air with a smell that was making her empty stomach even more ravenous. “Try something with more cheer, like ‘The Three Lads of Bleiharth.’”
“Feeling the words coming back upon you like a waterfowl coming south for the winter?” Gareth asked with that same cocksure grin. Martaina kept a tight lid on her irritation.
“I don’t notice any parallels, no,” Martaina said and took another whiff of the doe. It was nearly ready. “Although I sometimes wonder if you’re the maid in question.”
“I’m hardly a maid,” Gareth said, a little tight-lipped.
“You’re hardly anything else,” Martaina replied. “Or have you much to report from your last night’s sojourn?”
Gareth almost sputtered but caught himself in time, going prim again. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“I am a mite curious, yes,” she said, and took a sniff, trying to catch some hint of any other presence on him. Gareth was a tough one to scent, sometimes bathing up to five times per day to “wash off the grime,” as he put it. She eyed his hands; they were scrubbed clean of any of the residual dirt that habitually took up residence under her nails and caked onto her skin. “Does that make me nosey?”
“More than a little.” Gareth shifted to lay sideways across the ground. “My business is my own.”
“Your liaisons are your own, more like.” Martaina twisted the spit once more even as she twisted him. “Unless you’re conducting some form of banking in the night.”
“However you’d like to say it,” Gareth said, and now his grin was gone, replaced by a look of thin amusement. “Would you like to swap tales of ill-refined acts done under the moon’s light for sheerest titillation?”
“No,” Martaina said, though she felt a hint of a flutter at that thought. “No, I’m merely curious what draws my brother woodsman away in the evenings, whose pull takes him from this way of life we few remaining have embraced to call our own.” She felt herself wince. “We lowest of the low.”
“There are lower,” Gareth said, staring into the fire, “but not much. Not in this King’s new order. Field hand peasants are accorded more respect than we of the woods.”
“I suppose that’s the problem with a society that’s so ordered and classed,” Martaina said, watching Gareth’s regretful stare, “someone has forever got to be on the bottom in everyone’s estimation.”
“Do you remember the day that Yeram left?” Gareth said with a half-smile, as though remembering something pleasant. “Or were you too young?”
“I remember it vaguely,” Martaina said. She remembered Yeram, a kindly woman of almost five thou
sand years, one who had lived the life of the Iliarad’ouran for all of hers. Martaina recalled the woman’s rough hands, turned gentle in an instant to caress her cheeks when she was a child, or her deep, throaty voice singing her a lullaby. “I remember she feared the turn.”
“Aye,” Gareth said. “We told you as much at the time, but there was more. She said she’d grown weary of being a burden.”
“Of being a burden to us?” Martaina asked, the doe forgotten for a moment.
“No,” Gareth said, “she meant to the elves, by 'leeching' off this new Kingdom as we do.”
“Funny how we call it a ‘new’ Kingdom when it’s been around for longer than both of us,” Martaina said with a sly smile.
“Yes, indeed,” Gareth said. “Anyhow, she gave a long tract about how Arkaria was changing around us, about how our ways were dying because people no longer wanted to live in the woods, in the wilds—”
“Not that there’s much in the way of wilds left around here,” Martaina added.
Gareth ignored her and went on. “She said our way of life was going to die, and she didn’t want to watch.”
“Whatever happened to her?” Martaina asked.
“Not sure,” Gareth said. “She went to that upstart new city in the east. Termina, I think they call it.”
“Termina,” Martaina whispered. She’d heard the name, but it was so far away as to defy even imagining. She could scarcely imagine Pharesia, which she’d seen from time to time, stone walls standing tall and proud, bare earthen fields all around it. She’d heard her father talk about how there had once been woods surrounding the city, how it had been nestled in the heart of the forest before the farmers and loggers had come in and cleared it all out at the King’s behest. “How big do you suppose it is, Termina? Is it as big as Pharesia?”
“Surely not,” Gareth said with his smirk returned, full force. “It’s but a fraction of the size, still being new. It was a fishing village only a dozen years ago, I hear.”
“Hm,” Martaina said and let it go. She stared at the fire, turning over a thought before looking back to Gareth. “Are we going to die out?” She watched him, saw the slight ripple of expression on his face that he quickly buried. “The woodsmen, I mean—”
“I know what you mean.” Gareth propped his head up with one hand, his long hair twisted through his fingers. “No, we won’t die out.” His eyes narrowed and he looked up at her with a simmering bellyful of anger. “The people will realize they’ve been fooled, one by one. You hear about these changes, about these Dukes and Counts, lording it all over the people, about how unhappy the workers are as they toil the fields, knowing they’ll never do anything but work for the men who hold their yolks all their lives. This glorious kingdom that was promised, with Barons to see over each fiefdom, and Lords to look over each county, and masters to watch each house—it is all a lie. They get beds and shelter, grain and barley drink, but they lose themselves.” Now Gareth’s eyes looked far off, like he was watching something in the distance. “Men and women aren’t made to live like that, always at the call of another, not when there’s freedom to be had.” He took a deep breath. “The filthy air in Pharesia could never compare to this. Some baker’s bread could never be traded for a life of berries in the spring, a fresh kill you brought down yourself roasting over a fire.” He made a face, mouth downturned. “No master telling you what to do with every hour of your day in exchange for little pieces of metal could ever hold up to the freedom of finishing your hunt for the day and spending the rest of the night by the fire, whiling away the hours with a story and a song.”
Martaina thought about it for a moment, heard the conviction in his voice as he said it, and watched the wistful look on Gareth’s face as she took to turning the spit again. “True enough,” she said at last. “So long as the song isn’t ‘The Maid of Iliarad’ouran.’”
He gave her a small smile as he looked at her through the fire, his eyes filled with a smoke that didn’t come from the conflagration before them.
Six
Martaina took a deep breath of the sweaty night air, the confined space of Nethan’s bedchamber far different from staring up at the canopy of the woods, and the faint stars that shone through beyond. The dark ceiling hung overhead, barely visible in the low light of the lamps that streamed in around the cracks in the doors from the hall. Martaina felt Nethan’s warmth against her skin, smelled the sweat of the day and kissed him hard on the mouth, taking out her frustrations on his lips.
“Oh, my,” Nethan said when she broke off from him, rolling over to the edge of the four-post bed. Their shadow against the light streaming from the frame of the door made her think of trees in the first rays of sunrise. “You have been saving up your energies since last we saw each other.” He let out a little breath. “Though I admit, I had not thought a mere two days and one night enough to get you quite so worked up. Still, again you impress me with your boundless energy. So different from a field hand, worn down by the labors of the day.”
Martaina felt her back stiffen. “Do you often bed the field hands?”
There was a sort of pause that came before an indifferent reply. “From time to time, it’s happened. They certainly lack your vigor.” She felt his hand run across her shoulder, a reassuring sort of pat. “The townswomen as well.” She felt him lean against her shoulder and kiss her bare skin smoothly. “I’ve never been with anyone who does what you do.”
She tried to force her muscles to relax, but it did not come easily. “Thank you.” There was discomfort in her voice, and she traced it to her gut, to the queasy feeling that sprang from his mention of field hands and townswomen in his bed. “Why have you never asked me about my prior lovers?”
“Eh?” Nethan’s tone was light surprise. “I’ve never thought to concern myself with your earlier affairs.” He kissed her shoulder again. “I’m only interested in this one.” His thin fingers made their way across her face, tilting her chin toward him. He kissed her, waited for her to respond, then broke off gently after a moment.
“Nethan,” she said as she heard the wood frame of the bed squeak while he shifted his weight, “what would you say if I told you I might leave the woods?”
“I think you’re out of the woods right now.” His voice was filled with humor.
“I mean permanently,” she said, with greatest reluctance, feeling as though speaking the words aloud was the greatest betrayal. “What if I were to leave the woods permanently?”
“And go where?” his answer came almost immediately.
“I don’t know,” she said, lying most deliberately, waiting to see what he would say. “Where would a girl like me be welcomed?”
“I can think of a few places,” he said, nuzzling his smooth chin against her. So different from her father or Gareth, with their bearded cheeks. “Smaller villages would welcome aid from such a strong lass as you, someone to help manage the game for the local lords. Some guilds of adventurers would surely love assistance from one so skilled in the bow and the trail as you. Why, they’ve even established a League in Pharesia now for training rangers who do much the same as you, but more for archery in the course of war. They call themselves the Wanderers’ Brotherhood.” He sniffled in the night air, the stuffy heat of the chamber. “Or you could always go to Termina. I’ve heard everyone can find a place there.”
“Hm,” she said, not hearing the option she’d wanted from him. “Termina. Pharesia.”
“Well, only that very narrowly defined section of Pharesia,” he cautioned. “It’s a very hidebound place, very class and status conscious. Newcomers find little favor in polite society unless they come from landed nobility.” He hesitated. “I don’t think an Iliarad’ouran would find much favor there outside of the Brotherhood.”
“I see,” she said and rolled over in the bed, clutching the sheet tightly to her breast. She turned her back to him and listened to see if he would say anything else.
He didn’t, and the sound of gentle snori
ng filled her ears only moments later. She lay there, unable to sleep, the softness of the bed deceptively uncomfortable, wishing with all that was in her that she was laying on the forest floor instead.
Seven
“I’m going to go with you on your hunt this morning,” Amalys announced a few days later, surprising her as she made ready to leave the camp.
“All right,” she said a bit guardedly, watching his face for any sign of a jest, as though he’d simply announce with a laugh that he was fooling her, that he’d really remain in camp as he had for the last eight or more years while she and Gareth did the hunting. She felt a sort of forced discomfort; dealing with her father around the fire at night or during the day was a normal thing and enjoyable in its way when things weren’t tense between them. Lately, though, they’d felt tense all the time, and Gareth seemed to be gone even more than she was.
Amalys already had his bow at the ready, an old gnarled thing that looked as though it had been restrung. She peered at him, in his old cloak with his newly prepared bow, and wondered at the change. “I’ll lead,” he announced and flitted past her with surprising speed, trotting off at a jog.
The smell of the woods was damp and pleasant, a rain the night before having quelled much of the noise. The dry crackle of the leaves was replaced by the occasional drip of a bead of water falling from the canopy above. She could hear a squirrel chattering in the branches somewhere in the distance.
The day was warming, the sun heating the air around her and giving her cause to sweat beneath her cloak. The acidic taste of hunger pushed her on, making her wish she could shove her father aside and follow the sound of the squirrel to his place in the trees, shoot him out of it with one good arrow. She’d surely have to hunt again later, but it’d be a nice enough bite for breakfast to take the edge off the hunger.
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