Sword & Flame: The Sara Featherwood Adventures ~ Volume Two

by Guy Antibes

  Five people sat around the dining room table. The presence of a woman among them surprised her. They all rose as she entered.

  Choster made the introductions. The only names she remembered were Yanna Silverthread, the head of intelligence operations and Lestor Waterford, Northcross’ vice minister.

  “Go over exactly what happened tonight,” Waterford said.

  Willa gave them tea or wine as she began her story. Sara left out nothing except for her thoughts about the Duke as her father and the way she ignited the fatal shot. They stopped her at times for more detail, but the story didn’t take much time to tell. Sara took ten minutes to relay actions that took less than half of that.

  “Six of our men were killed during the invasion,” Yanna said. “From looking over the house, the men were all experts. Without your discovery of the passage, we’d have no idea who took the Duke. However, if the Grand Duke of Shattuk Downs took him, the Duke’s presence will not be secret for long. He’s a hostage.”

  One of the others said, “They might not even be out of Parth yet. We can still catch them.”

  Waterford took a sip of wine. “We’ve alerted the city guard and the army, but they will likely move faster than our messages. We must assume that Renall has been taken to Stonebridge.”

  They heard a pounding on the front door. Willa opened it up. Four people entered. Anton, Banna, Klark and Hedge.

  “Commander Silverthread,” Klark said, “Anton Rider has brought Banna Thresher here from Stonebridge. She was taken by the Grand Duke from Obridge as a hostage.”

  “Your story, Rider. We know of your work for the Grand Duke,” Yanna said.

  “The Duke’s men abducted Miss Thresher shortly after she returned to Obridge after Winter’s Rise and took her to Stonebridge. They wanted Doctor Hedge’s knowledge of the percussive powder and planned to use her to force him to travel to Stonebridge. When I heard of Banna’s incarceration, I engineered her escape at the expense of my employment by the Grand Duke.”

  “I would imagine, so it seems, the Duke has replaced you, Miss Thresher, as the Grand Duke’s prime hostage,” Waterford said drily. “Anton’s saving you probably drove him to take the drastic step of kidnapping the King’s brother and they probably arrived in Parth at the same time you did.”

  Klark said, “We went to the Ministry, but the Duke’s personal secretary told us that you were here.”

  “So much for a secret rendezvous,” Waterford said. “Now what to do with all of this?” He looked towards Yanna, who seemed to be lost in thought.

  “Banna and her husband will remain in Parth. Your house on the palace grounds is safer than anywhere else in the city. I will speak to the Minister of Defense and I’m sure he will agree to perform a rolling muster. We can have fifty thousand troops and supplies at the gates of Shattuk Downs in two weeks if the weather holds.”

  “Klark, I want you to take the Countess through the North Pass. She knows the northern downs better than any of my staff. Go to Belting Hollow and then move south to Obridge. Leave the Countess there and then proceed south to Stonebridge. We need intelligence, so take a crate of birds. If that’s acceptable to you, Countess.”

  “Anything to save the Duke,” Sara said. Perhaps she had just been given the opportunity to redeem herself.

  “I’ll go,” Anton said. “I have my family in Obridge.”

  Yanna shook her head. “You know what’s going on within Stonebridge better than any of my staff. I’ll need you to join the muster to help us plan the attack and what to do inside of the city. If you went into Shattuk Downs, you might be shot on sight.”

  “But my family!”

  “I’ll find them in Obridge, Anton,” Sara said. Purpose filled her heart. Back to Belting Hollow and Obridge. She’d eventually work her way down to Stonebridge and help save Northcross. Forward. She would focus her efforts on heading to Brightlings and then south.

  “Choster, you will go with Brownhill and the Countess. Take guns with you. Sara knows how to use them, she can train you on your way.”

  Talk turned to the logistics of moving the Parthian Army. Camps dotted the way to Shattuk Downs and a rolling muster meant they would be picking up troops as they went.

  Sara excused herself and ran up to her room to begin packing. Willa followed her.

  “Take me with you,” Willa said as they reached her room.

  “I can’t do that. You’re a housekeeper. Lady Grianna still needs you.” Sara panicked to think of reasons why Willa shouldn’t come. The trip wouldn’t be the kind of quick coach ride on a cobbled road all the way to Shattuk Downs.

  Willa put her hand on Sara’s shoulder. “I won’t desert you, Sara. I can’t let you go by yourself. Don’t take me as your maid, take me as another person you can use to save the Duke.”

  “I’m going to Obridge.” Sara said, not mentioning her intention to proceed south to free Duke Northcross.

  “No you’re not, you’re going all the way to Stonebridge. You may fool them, but you can’t fool me.”

  Sara protested and wondered if Willa had somehow taken any Interpretive Listening classes, but they didn’t have any such thing in Willa’s day.

  “You’re going on a mission to save him. Let me come. Not as a protector but as an ally. You’ll need a companion as you travel.”

  Willa squinted in her imperious pose, except this time she was deadly serious. No airs to intimidate. Tension filled the air. She’d follow her if she declined. Sara could see that.

  “Very well. What should we take?” Sara said.

  Willa took a deep breath. “One or two plain dresses. All of our practice clothes. Your riding outfit. I have one too. We’ll need those padded pants if we’re going through the North Pass.”

  ~~~

  Chapter Fifteen

  A Belting Hollow Return

  Most of the snow had melted around Parth. Choster stopped them midday and led them to a meadow. The ground was wet and uneven, but protected from the road. All four of them practiced with weapons after their meal.

  Klark worked with Sara. “You’re rather good with a sword, now,” he said.

  Sara pressed him back towards a tree. “Practice, but against one of the soldiers, I’m nothing. They took my sword away as quickly as they would a child.”

  “Then I’m of no use with a sword,” Klark said as he pressed back, but found himself back against the tree.

  “I’m going to get better,” Sara said through closed teeth. “I must.”

  Klark dropped his weapon in surrender. “You are amazing.” Sara let him wrap his arms around her and kissed her.

  Choster cleared his throat and furrowed his brow. “I’ll work with Sara a bit more. Klark, you can see if you can get through Willa’s guard.”

  ~

  The next day they took a less-traveled path to avoid a few villages and spent the night out in the open. Sara froze, but Choster suggested prudence. By missing the two towns, if they had been followed, their pursuers would be scratching their heads, wondering where they had gone. They left the pavement and took off on a sloppy track that Choster knew and returned to the cobbled road just before they reached the town of Seven Trees. They entered the inn, Choster made sure that they kept to themselves.

  “Why are we so reclusive? I thought our detour would be enough.” Sara asked as they ate their evening meal.

  Choster bit into a chicken leg. “Less said, less asked. It’s standard procedure.”

  “Standard procedure?” Sara looked at Klark whose mouth was filled with food. He nodded.

  “Eat up, Sara,” Willa said. “We all need to finish the food on our plates. We have to go over the pass and we might grow hungry.”

  “Little chance of that, Willa,” Choster said. “Oh, I’ll clean my plate for you, but the army has small camps all the way up and over the pass. Have done for years. The Grand Duke can send an army over the North or the South pass and they’d never get through, because a few camps strategically placed up the
trail can keep an army at bay going in either direction. The King prefers to patrol the eastern side and leave the Shattuk Downs slopes to the Grand Duke. The Narrows will soon be the only way in or out of the Downs heading east to Parth.”

  “What about The Gost?” Sara said.

  “Commander Silverthread is taking care of that by notifying the guards on the west side, but we need to provide her with more information about what’s happening in Shattuk Downs as a whole,” Klark said.

  Sara finished her meal and then walked up the stairs to her room, collapsing on a lumpy bed. Visions of her enemies troubled her dreams; of the assayer, of Rester Silver and the abductor of the Duke who killed himself because of her bolt of flame.

  She woke, alone in her room, and started to cry as the pressure of last hours began to assail her thoughts. The tears released much of her tension and while she let it go for a while, she gained control of her emotions and calmed down. She’d try to make that her last breakdown. These people depended on her. The Duke depended on her and as long as she continued to move towards Stonebridge, she’d gather the courage and the determination to move on.

  After Seven Trees, the road reverted to gravel and dirt. A carriage would have to go slow in all of the ruts and runnels, but since they were riding, they continued to make good time. In the middle of the day, Choster again had them stop.

  “It’s time you trained us to use those things. Up in the mountains, sounds carry. We are now as remote as we’ll ever be on this trip.”

  Sara dismounted. “Get your guns out and the powder and balls.”

  Willa, Choster and Klark stood in front of her. Sara knelt down. “Make sure the cartridges don’t get wet. This is how you load it. Take the cartridge and push it down the tube. Handle it gently. Firm is all right, but any hard blow and the cartridge might explode. Make sure the barrel isn’t pointed at you. That’s where the ball comes out of.” The explosion in the bedroom came to her mind and she couldn’t help but cringe.

  “Take the tamper and push the powder packet all the way to the bottom. Push the tamper, don’t pound on it. Now do the same thing with the ball. Firm, but slow.”

  All of them now stood up with loaded guns. “The ball will go where you point the barrel of the gun. The tube acts as a guide. Just like a handbow, the farther you are away from the target, the less chance you have of hitting what you are aiming at.”

  Sara braced herself for the gun’s recoil and pointed to a tree that was fifteen feet away and pulled the trigger. The explosion echoed through the forest followed by chips of wood flying out from the tree. Birds they didn’t know about sprung up from the meadow and flew into the air.

  Willa was next and aimed at the same tree and fell back on her bottom, hitting the side, shooting bark all over the place. She stood up shaking her hand. “My hand feels like it’s been kicked by a mule.”

  “Kick. We can call the recoil ‘kick’” Klark said. He hadn’t said much after their kiss in the meadow and that disappointed Sara a bit. Perhaps Choster had given him an instruction. Klark pointed his gun at a rock and shot. The ball hit the rock squarely and bits of rock chips were thrown back at them. A chip hit Klark in the cheek and a trickle of blood ran down. He laughed. “If you don’t hit your target watch out for the debris. That could have gotten in my eyes.”

  Choster pointed his gun towards another tree about twenty feet away and pulled the trigger. The ball buried into the middle of the tree. He looked at the smoking barrel. “Damn it all. All those years with a sword. I kind of like this weapon. Crossbow bolts aren’t anything compared to this.”

  Sara had them all try again. This time Willa shot the gun with one foot forward and one back. The gun still knocked her backwards, but she didn’t fall.

  “We have to preserve the balls and cartridges, so that’s your practice,” Sara said as she packed up her gun and pulled out some food.

  They spent that night in an army camp. Both the food and the cots in tent cabins were nothing like Seven Trees, but the company rode out the next morning with more food in their saddlebags. The next night would be spent up in the mountains, by themselves.

  “We have to go through those?” Willa said as the morning mist cleared to reveal the mountains that protected Shattuk Downs.

  “This is the only way to access the downs in the north. It was cut out of the mountains three hundred years ago or so and still there are places where the path is one horse wide,” Sara said. “Ben Featherwood took me up halfway on the Shattuk Downs side when I was eleven or twelve years old.”

  She had asked about West coming through and the soldiers shrugged. “Small groups travel the pass all of the time. He could have come through here,” a lieutenant said.

  The memory came back into her mind. It was just after the harvest and Ben had time on his hands that he didn’t want to spend at Brightlings so he told her mother he wanted to go on a ride up the pass and back. Sara remembered pleading with him to take her with him. He relented and it was a wonderful time with him. He seemed to loosen up when they were away from Brightlings and told her how he liked to be away from the manor.

  Knowing the truth of her paternity and what she remembered of his words, the trip had fit perfectly with a man who didn’t want anything to do with his wife. He talked about missing his sons and wishing they were old enough for the trip. Seb and Enos were old enough now, but she suspected there wouldn’t be any trips, not if Ben felt threatened about Brightlings.

  The gradual incline of the ground increased as they continued to rise through the mountains. In two days they’d be in Belting Hollow. The last night on the Parthy side, they stayed in a small army camp, eating their own food and only taking on fresh water and a bag of fodder for each of their horses.

  Sara wanted to see Shattuk Downs from the top of the pass, but the clouds only permitted her to see about twenty feet in front of her. They began to descend along the slushy, muddy trail. There would be no army camps on this side of the mountain. Soon they were in foothills and Sara began to recognize her way.

  They came to a fork in the road. “Which way?” Choster looked at Sara.

  “Right. This road will take us close to Brightlings on the way to Belting Hollow.” The anticipation rose within her. Brightlings. At least she’d be able to see the outside of her home—her estate.

  Sara now knew they were on Brightlings property and she smelled the harsh scent of a quenched fire. “Someone’s been burning wood outside in the middle of the winter and it still stinks.”

  “No simple fire.” Choster said. “Which way is it to Brightlings?”

  Sara reacted to Choster’s concern and took off with her horse. The stench increased as she rode into the park that surrounded the manor house or what remained of it. Smoke still trickled up in a few places, but someone had burned Brightlings to the ground.

  ~~~

  Chapter Sixteen

  A Brightlings Tragedy

  The smoldering ruins that spread from where she stood shattered Sara’s heart. Her roots had burned up in those remains. Her mother walked the blackened stone stairs that lead a few steps up to nothing. The chimneys had fallen except for the kitchen’s, which stood as a sentinel over the disaster. Even the iron-framed conservatory had buckled during the inferno. Not an unbroken pane of glass. The barn and the outbuildings were all that remained.

  Choster and Klark returned from their inspection. “No one’s here, Sara,” Klark said. He put an arm around her shoulders. Willa poked around the kitchen area and screamed. She fell.

  “The house has a basement,” Sara said as she cast off Klark’s arm and began to run. “She’s fallen into it.”

  With a rope in his hand Choster carefully picked his way through the wreckage and found the hole. “Willa?”

  “Are you just going to stand there with that rope decorating your hands?”

  Evidently Willa hadn’t been seriously injured. “Can you see what’s happened in the basement?” Sara said.

  “The
re’s a body down here. Young woman. Very blonde, but very dead.”

  June. Sara’s heart leapt in her throat. She had no idea who else might be buried in the charred rubble.

  “I want her out of there. She’s June, the cook’s helper.”

  Choster pulled Willa up from the basement and let Klark down to deal with the body. June’s clothes were scorched but not as burned as Sara feared.

  “Died from no air, most likely,” Choster said. “Hair’s all streaked from the smoke.”

  Willa amended her previous words. “Not everything burned down where I found her, but everything is at least marked by smoke from the fire.”

  “Why?” Sara said as she walked with Klark to the barn for tools to bury June.

  “Vicious. Whoever did this was just being vicious,” Klark said. When they were in the barn, he hugged her. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

  Sara clung to him, soaking up his warmth and his own sorrow, mixing it with her own. “I just can’t see the Grand Duke burning down Brightlings. It’s not as if it were a castle. It has no strategic interest.”

  “The mines?” Klark said.

  Sara pulled away. “West. He’s vindictive enough. Yes, the mines. Let’s get June properly laid to rest and head up there. Maybe that’s where Ben is.”

  Choster knew a bit of battlefield liturgy and said a prayer to the dead over June’s grave. They had buried her in the little graveyard behind the barn. Sara vowed to return and give the woman a proper headstone.

  Sara wiped away a tear and mounted up. “I know the way.” She had made it to the mines in one long day, but this time they would have to camp along the way since they left in the afternoon.

  Choster sent off one of their birds with a message and then he made them practice with their steel weapons. “If Brightlings is burned, then we need to be prepared for the worst up at the mines. The Duke left troops to defend the mine, but I doubt if they could fight off twenty or thirty men.