Aldrin approached her slowly, afraid she'd vanish just as quickly as the ghost girl and lightly laid his hand against hers. She took it without looking at him; her head still craned high trying to find the scepter of Balal. "I'm not sure where we are. North could be just about anywhere."
The castle looked like little more than a dollhouse in the distance. Whatever winding the cave seemed to take, it mostly led in the outward direction. But something was wrong, the wind smelled peculiar. There was too much horse, too much iron and too much sweat that'd been trapped inside of leather.
Even the hairs on the back of Aldrin's neck stood up in the extra blackness of the forest. His guide leaned down to his ear and whispered, "We best move quickly and silently as far away from the castle as possible."
Taking a gentle step forward, he followed suit, matching her. But the forest, full of a years worth of shedding was in no mood to cooperate. Twigs crackled under foot, leaves shuffled beneath boots. Anyone hiding in the trees was bound to hear them and there was an good a chance as any the branches were full to bursting with the enemy.
The darkness paused, again craning her neck high trying to determine which way the road was. Aldrin paused completely, his weight settling upon a set of twigs that snapped hard beneath him.
His guide froze, turning to look at him in as an accusatory manner one can manage in near darkness. He shied away from her, shifting his weight onto the balls of his feet, causing even more twigs to snap. It felt like the entire ground shuddered with him as she whispered a sharp, "Shhh."
Trying to carefully slide off this booby trap, Aldrin got one foot up before the world gave way.
The scream strangled into a gurgle as he bit down on his tongue, the earthy iron taste rushing into his mouth. He dangled by the one arm, still held firmly by his darkness above a pit of torture.
He started crying, "Don't let go! Please, don't let go!"
The darkness, who'd been pulled down with him and hung partly over the pit herself, gritted her teeth and whispered, "I won't let go, but I can't hold on much longer. Give me your other hand."
Aldrin shifted a bit, causing his muddy fingers to slip, "I...oh gods, I can't. Don't let go. Please. Please. Don't go. Just don't. Don't." He chattered "don't" over and over, as the darkness tried to calm him down.
"It's okay. I won't let go. You're in a bear pit. But it's the edges. Can you look down? Can you see the bottom?"
Aldrin shifted his eyes quickly down, and a silvery beam of moonlight glinted off wooden spikes taller than he was, stained with a fatal ink. "I dunno. I can't see it. Please, don't let go!"
The darkness grunted hard, "You're slipping, I can't keep you up much longer. Look, if you hug the side, the fall won't be long and there aren't any spikes there."
"How do you know?!" he cried out, certain she was about to toss him to his death.
"Because I can see them."
Aldrin looked up into a pair of eyes, glowing white in the surrounding darkness and getting wider with each strain of his form. "I'm gonna let you go, just grab onto the side. It'll be okay."
"No," he shook his head. "No, don't."
"One."
"No, please, I can't do this. I..."
"Two."
"Gods no!" he tried to grab her hand tighter, the sweat making his grasp all the more tenuous.
"Th..." before she finished the number, she released her fingers and he crashed into the wall, his fingers digging deep into long disturbed earth.
The fall felt like ages, but was really only about three feet, his shoes sinking into the mud to keep him from falling back into the spike that now towered above him.
"Are you all right?" the darkness called down.
Aldrin realized that while he could still see her silhouetted by starlight, she'd lost sight of most of him. "Yes, yes. I'm alive."
"Okay," it wasn't quite the relieved response he'd been expecting. A bit more "wonderful" or "thank the pantheon" would have been preferable to a "yes I heard you. Whatever." "If I can flag down Marna, I can get some rope and..."
As soon as the head began to disappear from sight he screamed, the kind of scream that could draw attention from, say, an army camped not even a mile away from their predicament.
His darkness hissed, "Shut your noble hole."
But Aldrin, so many strains held in check, finally snapped, "Please, don't leave me! Don't go! I'll just, Gods!" He started to scramble, the dirt crumbling beneath his fingers and falling into his mouth. He jumped high, trying to find a root, anything other than more transient dirt to cling to.
On his fifth jump, a hand, blacker than the earth around him, latched onto his and refused to let go.
CHAPTER FIVE
"Reach. No, reach harder!" Ciara's voice rasped in the slowly rising light of dawn, her legs dangling over the pit as she tried to haul the trapped prey out of its den.
The night offered little in the promise of rest. After the boy's outbursts she did the only thing she could think to silence him and, laying upon her stomach, lowered her arm as far as she could, their fingertips meeting.
He must have spent the darkened hours hoisted up on his tiptoes, his fingers glancing across hers, as the forest shook in anger from the trespassers rampaging through its underbrush. She couldn't see anything but the top of a sandy head and the glint of shredding teeth below. Behind her, the dancing light of fire licked castle walls, the movement and light playing tricks upon her peripheral vision as she feared she kept spying men advancing upon them. Moving not an inch, she listened through her own pounding heart as the monsters in the dark swiped through, their swords searching the underbrush for something.
For the most part, they stayed in the distance, closer to the castle walls, hunting for those bodies who tried to jump from the parapets to escape. But as night turned into the forgotten hours of the new day, their search grew more desperate. Knights promoted themselves to field commanders, issuing confusing orders to each other. They didn't want to be wandering ankle deep in this gods forsaken forest anymore than their charges did.
One man, with a sharp heel to his boot that hadn't been worn down, broke free of the group. In her minds eye, Ciara could see him; his eyes red with rage, blood dripping off his sword as he held aloft an enemy's head with a candle wedged onto the tongue for a lantern.
Boots crackled across the underbrush, he was unused to campaigns that involved so much nature. For the Empire war was orderly, two armies meet together on the battlefield, have a right lovely massacre, then as dusk settles, head back to the tents for some tea and amputations. But this infiltration business was new to them and, judging by how easily they'd lost a young boy it was looking as if they'd need a bit more practice.
Ciara held her breath as the monster drew closer. She glanced down, terrified that the kid would take that exact moment to cry, or move. But he seemed as aware of the danger as her and laid his body quietly against the earthen wall. Once more, the enemy flashed his monstrous lantern upon the bracken, but could only spy more fallen branches and shrubbery. A voice, high and lyrical like the Aravingions, called into the forest and the man turned to rejoin his company, not even bothering to look back.
The rest of the early morn passed in relative peace as the soldiers left the smoldering castle walls, the company marching east towards the road. But still Ciara waited, afraid that any movement would call attention back upon them, even as her guts tried to pop out of her backside. She feared her ribs would be permanently flattened by the time dawn rose.
With the sun came precious but also deadly sight, the two wouldn't stand a chance trapped in this bear pit. Speaking to the boy as if he were a toddler she instructed him to look around. There were always steps ground into the wall to help those who dug the pit get back out. Once those were discovered it was only a matter of providing a counter balance to the noble's wobbly limbs and half lifting him out herself. Grasping his hands one last time, she leaned back and, using her weight, drug the boy out of his pit. Ciara'
s grimy hands finally slipped and she rolled backwards, her ass flipping over top her head as her fraying skirts bloomed around her.
She scrambled to her feet, trying to shake off whatever remarks any watchers would make, but the boy struggled as much as she. His face was streaked with dirt and muck, especially the side that spent the night pressed up against it. His velvet coat was encased in mud, only a strange sheen of purple belied his very convincing peasant costume.
He coughed into his hand, and then tried to extract a handkerchief out of his pocket. As his fingers found the edge of the wadded up mud ball, a clod tumbled free, unfolding the hankie.
A choke started as a sob then transformed into a laugh on the way out. As the muddied handkerchief shook in the breeze, the laughter seized him harder. The once white edge slipped from his fingers and plopped to the ground, eliciting such a strong bray his thoracic muscles gave out and he bent over, holding tight to his knees.
Regardless of, or perhaps because of the absurdity of it all, Ciara found herself chuckling along. They'd survived. Despite the odds, the men, and the lack of a plan they'd beaten the Raven Lady for the night.
The boy's face contorted, his laughter causing mud to plop from his filthy head which, in turn, led to more laughter. She was afraid he would hyperventilate as his visage shifted from pale to crimson under the muck.
"Hey," Ciara called to the braying boy. He paused for a moment and she spotted the tears sliding from his eyes. Holding out her hand, she asked, "Why don't you help me up?"
Smiling wanly, he extended his hand to hers and, grabbing it tightly, for once helped to raise her. She steadied her hand upon his shoulder as his eyes looked up into hers.
"I was afraid you'd vanish," he mumbled.
Ciara stepped back, trying to position her skirt that picked up a few sticks on the tumble, "I'm not one of the unblinking. And I can go out in daylight just fine."
"I just didn't think you'd stay."
She regretted her tone as the boy shrunk under her acidic response. But having spent most of her life explaining to people that no her skin color wasn't actually a curse, she wasn't about to steal their souls, and that she rather enjoyed the sight of the sun, she didn't mind putting it all out there for him. "I made a promise, didn't I?"
The boy nodded, wiping more mud onto his nose, "Yeah. Promise?"
"Promise," she repeated, as if it could actually mean something now that they were stranded with no resources, no coin and no one they could call upon to help. "My name's Ciara, by the way. Introductions were a bit interrupted by all the fleeing."
"I'm Bo..." the boy paused briefly, "Aldrin. I'm Aldrin."
"Son of..."
He shook his head, kicking out the last of the dried dirt. Looking back towards the castle that even by the light of day still smoldered from fires started by either the invaders or the occupants, his voice dropped, "It doesn't matter."
Ah, so the bastard of...most likely, Ciara thought. They could be rather touchy about that stuff.
The boy looked up at her, his eyes still pooling in the rosy light, "What now?"
Ciara glanced towards the road, a white river in the distance. "We make for Aldershot, get whatever supplies we can, and hope to beat the winter."
"Have you been to this Tumbler's End before?" Aldrin asked her, grateful to still have someone calling all the shots in his life.
Ciara paused for a moment, "No, I've never been past the town excepting on one hunting trip with my father." Her voice trailed off at that. She didn't want to think of her father tossed back into the chaos, of her mother, what few of her colleagues she cared for, even the Lord himself. He was normally nothing more than a distant blot in her life, but a demi-god in the eyes of her father.
Aldrin gulped again, the joy of survival crushed by the depression of having to continue. She dug through her pockets, pulling out a worn leather pouch with sufficient gold to keep her alive for one week if she were thrifty. Her father insisted she carry enough to get her to the castle from any part of the hold, but never enough to gain attention from pick pockets or bandits.
Looking back towards what was her home one final time, she grimaced. And what if I have to get away from the keep, Father? Why didn't you think of that? Why didn't any of us ever think of that? She buried a melodramatic sigh, and returning to the son of ellipses said, "I'm supposin' you don't have any coin on you?"
Aldrin shook his head, of course not. Nobility always made a show of never carrying more than they want, less than they need. After all, wasn't that what servants were for.
"Well," her minimal coin purse slipped back into her pocket, "we best tighten our belts then. I fear it shall be a long walk to Tumbler's End."
Setting one foot forward she struck out East, keeping the road always within sight but far enough in the distance only those looking deep into the dark woods would spot them. Aldrin picked at something on his mud tunic, a final bit of white embroidery thread still poking through the thick mud. As the last strands unwound from his grubby fingers, he chased after Ciara, the dragon trailing behind him.
Traveling through the untamed part of the forest was harder work than Ciara expected. When her skirts weren't snagging on branches, burrs, rocks, and big burrs that look like rocks she'd have the trees getting uncomfortably friendly with her. Thanks to the overuse of deer trails and skirting closer to the road than she'd admit to her father, they made their way in pretty good time to the outskirts of Aldershot, just as the merciful sun settled down for a sleep.
"I've been here a few times before, it's little more than a crumb on the map, but this autumn heat will not last long. We'll need winter clothing and provisions."
"A hot meal and a warm bed would be nice as well."
Ciara grunted, knowing just what kind of meal and bed her meager coin would get. Sure, the boy could drop his father's name and they'd be set for about four hours before the mercs slit their throats in their featherbed sleep.
She dropped the boy's hand, wiping the palm sweat across her dress. They'd been intertwined after he ran off to relieve himself and she spent what felt like hours yelling for him. He appeared around a brush pile, some of the mud off his face, carrying an even more beaten down sword than the one Marna handed him.
"Where'd ya get that?" Ciara demanded, pointing to the rotten thing.
"It was the strangest thing. A lady, clad only in sea foam, rose out of the lake and declared it to be my destiny," he waved the bent thing around, the blade redder than clay from rust and misshapen so badly it formed a serpentine 'S.'
"There ain't no lakes about here," Ciara pointed out, "Just the river."
Aldrin didn't seem to much notice, having finally found a blade that suited him, a more than likely cursed, disease ridden thing tossed into the marshland after a battle ages ago. He whooshed the S around his head as if he were about to impale his destiny himself.
"The lady of the drainage ditch is dictating your destiny?" The brown eyes, a funhouse mirror of skepticism reflected back onto his own.
Aldrin stopped waving his arm around and looked at the half rotted thing seemingly for the first time. "Yeah, you're right. It belongs back with the dead where it fell."
And pulling his arm back, he heaved the thing as far as it could go. Swords aren't the most aerodynamic of weaponry8, especially one that twisted like a stream, so it flew five feet before crashing awkwardly to the dirt.
Ciara grabbed a hold of Aldrin's hand and huffed, "Come on," leading him away from the forest.
Neither of them noticed the hand rising from the marshy ground, clasping the hilt.
"Maybe I'll try giving out rolls of pennies next time instead."
Pulling her cowl's hood over her head, Ciara tried to look as inconspicuous as possible. This, of course, drew more attention to her than if she'd walked into the town square and burped the Hold's anthem. "Let 'em all go to hell, except for Aldershan!"
Luckily, she walked slightly in front of the boy who could vanish in a cr
owd of one. It had always been difficult for his nurses to punish Aldrin because they forget who they were talking to halfway through a "And you'll get such a caning for...who broke this vase?"
The town was settling down after a hard day of trying to pretend they didn't just watch the castle go up in flames and avoiding anything political outside of who the mayor was sticking it to9. Only a strong light poured out of a set of hanging doors that marked the town's pub, inn, rec center, and hospital10.
It wasn't that the doors were supposed to be perched so precariously upon their hinges, the owner was simply going through a bit of a post-modern moment and got his level from the lady of the drainage ditch. If you didn't grip on tightly while sitting at the bar, you were likely to find yourself sliding into your neighbor. All of the furniture in the west room on the third floor was nailed to the ceiling, and it's best to not talk about what happens to anyone who visits the midden.
The rest of the town was closing, the grocer sweeping all the apples that crashed to the floor into a bucket labeled, "Free or best offer." And the extremely exquisite clothing store "Liarta's Garments," so fancy she makes you take your shoes off before you can try the pants on, flickered its lights once for last call.
Ciara sized up the garment store, a satin dress with mouse holes cut into the bodice on prime display in the window; and, grabbing Aldrin, dragged him in. A bell jangled greedily to welcome fresh money and Liarta looked up.
She couldn't have been much past thirty, but the spackle on her face gave the illusion she'd seen her 60th winter. Nearly an inch thick, the white reminded Ciara less of Marna's haunting face and more the saddest specimen to take to the performing arts, a Bard that never learned any stories. The bright dots on her cheeks and swipe of kohl both over and below her eyes completed the mime look.
The King's Blood Page 5