by Gwynn White
“That might make them think twice before approaching, though,” I argued quickly. “There would have been no danger in approaching a wagon full of corpses. Encountering resistance, though? This may have bought us another minute or two that we didn’t have before.”
Arwin and Morena had joined us by then, standing in the circle of light cast by my lantern, and my friend was nodding shallowly with a smile on her face. “He’s right,” she said, and then her tone turned warning. “So let’s not waste it.”
“Into the forest? Lose them among the trees?” I suggested.
Oren frowned. “The woods are a dangerous place, especially at night. I’ve heard rumors about these parts; there’s a reason we keep to the road.”
Morena nodded fervently. “Yes, if we stay to the road, that’s where we are likeliest to find help. Someone else will come along soon enough.”
“No saying whether that someone is friend or foe, though,” Arwin said.
“The citadel will surely send someone to help, won’t they?” Morena asked hopefully, glancing at Oren.
He and I exchanged a glance charged with worry. I knew he wanted to avoid precisely that scenario.
“Trouble is on the road, too,” Oren said. “Whoever attacked us is just on the other side, hugging the woods.” He pointed straight into the trees. “If we go in deep enough in the opposite direction, we can find somewhere sheltered to wait out the night, then return here when the sun rises. I doubt whoever attacked us will be so brazen under the watch of the Lord of Clouds.”
Arwin tugged at my sleeve discreetly, and I turned to her. Her head completely still, she let her eyes dart toward Oren, then back to me, demanding answers. She’d picked up on the fact that Oren was acting shifty. I shook my head so faintly that it might’ve been passed off as a symptom of the cool air, and then took a step backward toward the forest. “Like Arwin said, we need to get moving. Everyone stay within sight of each other—or me, since I have the lamp. That will be easiest to spot in the dark. And if someone falls behind, take cover and wait for us to find you.”
Oren grunted, then gestured with a hand. “Ready to run when you are.”
“Wait! Shouldn’t we check on the carriage driver?” Morena asked.
“I’ll do it!” Arwin volunteered. I raised an eyebrow at her, but she didn’t see it, having already turned toward the front of the wagon. “Give me a second.”
She disappeared from the circle of amber light, and with every passing second, my nerves grew more frayed. Someone wanted to hurt us. They already had, to some degree. While we had been keeping our voices low, the driver would have surely heard us and joined us by now if he were able. The fact that he hadn’t made a sound gave me little hope that he had survived, and Arwin had to have known that too.
Footsteps sounded, and then Arwin was back with us. She firmed up her grip on our shared bag, the slender strap digging slightly into her shoulder. “He didn’t make it,” she said soberly. “But the horse was missing. If it’s still somewhere nearby, we can grab it in a few hours and go from there.”
“We need to get moving,” Oren urged. “Morena, with me. Arwin?” She nodded. “Arwin, you and Mal lead with the lantern. I will not lose sight of it.”
He spoke with such confidence that I couldn’t have found it in me to doubt him. Besides, I had faith that he would be able to guide Morena in the dark even if we got separated. I would have to ask him about the glow to his eyes when we finally had a moment to relax.
I reached out and found Arwin’s hand, the one not holding the strap of our bag. It was warm and reassuring. “Follow me,” I said, and with the other hand holding the lantern aloft, I took the first step past the forest’s edge.
With the sound of the others’ footsteps following close behind me, I trod over decaying fallen tree limbs and edged away from dark spots on that ground that may or may not have been entrances to dens and burrows—it seemed safest to avoid them either way.
The forest swallowed us up like ants marching into the ocean. At one point I looked back behind us, holding the lantern aloft to help its light spread, but I couldn’t see any sign of the road, no sign of a break in the trees. Oren caught up to me in that moment and, with a steady hand, turned me around and grunted, “Keep moving. They aren’t far behind us.”
I wasn’t sure how he knew we were being pursued through the trees, but I took it on faith that he knew what he was talking about. Just as Arwin was better at moving unseen, Oren seemed suited to moving unheard, and his senses were more finely tuned than my own. I couldn’t hear pursuers, or see them in the dark, but Oren somehow managed both.
I swung the lantern forward and continued on. Arwin’s hand clasped in mine was a constant reminder of her presence, and more than once we kept each other from stumbling to the ground over something missed in the soft glow of the fire’s light.
“How are we going to find our way back?” she asked after we’d been walking for some time.
My stomach growled a low warning. We hadn’t eaten in a while now, and with the restless sleep in the carriage followed by the surprise attack, my body was in full panic mode. Fatigue. Thirst. Hunger. I’d neglected all of them, and my shoulder was still healing, to boot.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back. “I’m guessing Oren has some way of navigating in the darkness. Otherwise, we’ll have to hope our tracks are enough to guide us.”
Arwin made a soft noise that might have been either content agreement or gentle disbelief. Either way, she started leaving obvious markers along the way, snapping crisp branches so they were clearly broken on purpose, and stopping to overturn rocks so the caked moist earth faced skyward and the worms and beetles nestled underneath scurried away in search of new cover.
“Stop that,” Oren said after she took almost half a minute to drag a fallen branch up to lean against a tree. “You’re only going to help them find us.”
Arwin rounded on him, the lantern’s light throwing her angular features into sharp relief. Deep shadows crossed her cheekbones as she glared up at the cleric. “I’m sorry, but who decided you could boss us all around?”
“Arwin…”
“No, actually, I’m not sorry. What I am doing is making sure we don’t get so mixed up in these woods that we can’t find our way back to the road when morning comes. Maybe you have some aversion to daylight, but not us.” At the look on his face, Arwin smirked and jabbed a finger in his chest. “Yes, I heard your little conversation with Mal earlier. So forgive me if I don’t feel comfortable being led deep into the forest by a strange man. Or don’t forgive me, I don’t really care.”
Oren breathed in deep, and I saw Arwin’s finger get pushed out as the muscle beneath his robes expanded in response. “You will take back that finger of yours, and those words, or you won’t like what happens next.”
That didn’t sound at all like what I would have expected from a man of the faith. This side of Oren was cold and distant, darker than even the Depths could promise. I held my lantern overhead as I stepped between the two and just to the side.
“I think we all just need to take a second and calm down,” I said, holding up placating hands. “If Oren is correct, then we’re still being pursued by whoever attacked the carriage. If that is true, though, then they can see well enough in the dark even without our trail markers.”
“But that doesn’t mean—”
“What it means is that we are better off preparing the way for the walk back in the morning rather than hamstringing ourselves in the hopes that it slows them down. You’re confident they are out here, Oren?”
He frowned at what I’d just said but nodded tightly. “Yes, but—”
“Then it’s safe to assume they can track us either way. We don’t know these woods, and if leaving a trail back towards the road is only going to put us in harm’s way later, then we need to pick a spot to stand and fight.” I paused to meet everyone’s eyes, including Morena’s. “They had the advantage of surprise on their s
ide back at the carriage. Now we can flip it on them.”
“How’s that?” Morena asked, her voice constricted with stress. “One lantern and a glowing set of eyes won’t even the odds. But if we put enough distance between us to keep them off our hides until morning, even I can aim a rock in the light.”
Arwin shook her head. “We can’t hope that we’ll be able to do that, though.”
“For once, I agree with you,” Oren said.
She stuck her tongue out at him, but I felt the tension finally break between them. “Sorry, Morena, but we have to do this.”
“Then I will sit it out,” she announced.
“What?”
“Are you really that selfish?” Arwin demanded, now finding a new target. And so soon after she’d made peace with Oren.
“What?” Morena said defensively. “Look at me; I am dirty and poor and unarmed. They have no reason to kill me. Whatever one of you did, this trouble will not extend to me. And I know fighting in the dark will only get me killed. So I will wait and see how it all turns out.”
“That is madness,” Oren growled.
“We’re wasting time,” I reminded them.
“In a minute, Mal.” Arwin put a hand over one fist and cracked her knuckles. “Miss Priss needs to understand her place.”
Morena planted her hands on her hips. “Excuse me? Who do you think you are?”
But Arwin refused to back down. I worried that her voice would carry through the trees to the ears of our pursuers, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to silence her once she got on a roll like this.
“Who do you think you are?” she countered, unwilling to break their shared glare. “We are putting our necks on the line for you, and you’re going to, what? Watch? Beg whoever wins to let you leave this forest with them? Because you’re right, you won’t get out of here without someone taking pity on you, and that’s the worst idea you’ve had all night. At least we have a plan with a shot at succeeding.”
“Arwin, that’s enough.”
“Mal, what she’s saying is—”
“Shh!” I urged her.
Oren took a more direct route. In one quick stride, he closed the distance between him and Arwen and clamped one large hand over her mouth, taking care not to cover her nose so she could still breathe. She struggled and kicked against him for a moment, but I huddled in close to them and kept the lantern sheltered within our tiny circle of bodies.
“They’re here,” I said quietly, and then, acting against every urge in my body, I reached inside the glass casing and pinched the top of the wick, plunging us into darkness.
12
It was just after Arwin’s short speech to Morena that I’d heard the first dry twig snap underfoot. Oren had started moving right before then, picking up on the sound of incoming enemies a moment before me.
The light of the candle still burned a few seconds more in my eyes as I blinked rapidly and tried to adjust to the sudden complete darkness. Without Arwin and Morena arguing, the deep intensity of the silence surrounding us truly took hold. We were huddled together like birds trying to keep warm in winter, except instead of sharing body heat, we were collectively willing our other senses to catch up and compensate for the sudden loss of sight.
My ears were the first to answer the call, and the most useful. Taste and touch were basically useless at the moment, aside from telling me I was touching the cold metal holding ring of a dead lantern and could taste the dull, wooden feeling of time spent breathing with my mouth wide open, both in the carriage and on the run through the woods. The only smells I could discern at the moment were damp, rot, sweat, and the lingering smoke from the lantern. I should have thought of that last one earlier, I realized, as the scent of smoke would have been an obvious thing to follow, but I could recriminate myself later.
Before all those other senses kicked in, though, it was hearing that dominated. I made out the sound of brambles being brushed aside for someone to pass through them without snagging on the prickly thorns. The absence of animal noises nearby added its own solemn note to the scene, as we’d been accompanied by at least the scurrying of rodents and small nocturnal predators for the last half hour. I heard the labored breathing of Oren and Arwin, fresh from their confrontation. Even Morena gasped at the sound of a snapped twig nearby. It seemed our pursuers had discarded caution, assuming we would still be loud enough to cover their pursuit in our heedless retreat into the woods.
Oren’s eyes still gave him away in the dark, but even as I watched, the pinpoints of light blinked out of existence and didn’t return.
“What did you do?” I hissed.
“My eyes are closed,” he replied calmly.
“Won’t that hinder you in a fight?”
“No more than keeping them open would aid our enemy. Trust in me; I know what I am doing.”
Concern still coiled in my chest, but I nodded tightly. “Morena, find somewhere to hide,” I said.
Arwin looked ready to respond by laying into Morena, but I smothered that rant with a hand on her arm. “Later,” I promised her. “Now we have bigger issues.”
“Mal is right,” Oren whispered. “Morena, take cover.” He reached inside his robe and took out a dagger as long as my forearm and which glowed with the same bright ferocity as Oren’s pupils.
“Oren, your dagger…”
The man opened his eyes and saw the glow, and the reflection of it in his own pupils widened with his surprise. “That…shouldn’t be happening,” he murmured slowly.
“What does that mean?” Morena asked.
“It means the situation just became more complicated for us. Mal, there is a soldier of the Empire lurking among those trees. This blade is enchanted as a mark of identification to those in the service of the emperor. If it is glowing now…”
“Then there is someone we should go to great pains to avoid killing,” I said, followed by a curse. “Why would an imperial soldier be—?”
But the question died on my lips as I considered my question in its entirety. We knew next to nothing about Morena, which didn’t help narrow down the cause, but it would do nothing for us to speculate on who she might have wronged before stepping foot inside our carriage. Oren was at fault with the clerics and the faith of the Lord of Clouds for some reason or another, but again, that didn’t make him culpable with the Empire. That left Arwin and myself, and I knew for certain that we had crossed someone bearing the badge and blade of those who served the emperor’s interests directly. In fact, it hadn’t even been two days since I had spared his life in Mitbas.
And now he was here. As soon as that thought solidified in my mind, I knew it was true. Barring some freak coincidence involving Morena having a past as checkered as mine was short, there was no other explanation for it.
“We brought this,” I muttered, so low that only Arwin heard me.
Her eyebrows knitted together with concern, but she didn’t speak immediately. Instead, she tugged my arm and pulled me away from Oren and Morena.
“Do you think it’s Beyland?” Arwin whispered to me in a low tone as we took cover behind a large fallen tree.
I glanced her way, peered through the tangle of roots stemming sideways from the fallen tree trunk, then turned sharply back to her. “Depths take us, I forgot about him.”
Arwin’s frown deepened. “Forgot about the man who took over our town and banished us under pain of death? How did you—you know what, never mind. So why did you say that, a minute ago? That we’re responsible for the soldier or whoever that’s chasing us?”
“I think it’s that guard from Mitbas. The one who cornered you for stealing a loaf of bread.”
“The one you left alive,” she deadpanned.
“Yes, and I’m starting to regret that. I didn’t think he would follow us out this far; after we left Mitbas, I assumed the matter would be at rest.”
Arwin laughed harshly. “A little late for that now.”
A voice rose out of the darkness to greet us then,
one that was familiar in a greasy, uncomfortable way.
“Lay down your weapon, Cleric,” came the order from none other than the blond Mitbas guard, who raised a torch overhead to reveal both his features and his position. I peeked at him through the tree roots; he looked for all the world like a man on a mission.
“Don’t come any closer,” Oren called from somewhere to our right. His call drew the guard’s gaze, and I motioned to Arwin. Together, we crawled carefully leftward, skirting well outside the perimeter of the torch’s light. Oren’s voice took on a deferential tone as he continued. “Identify yourself, soldier, so that I may know who I am dealing with.”
“Imperial Legate Elias Karver, third order. I was stationed temporarily in the provincial town of Mitbas,” the man replied instantly. “I recognize the white robes of an adherent of the faith. What is your name, Cleric?”
Third order? And he was a damned imperial legate, to boot, and not some bottom-rate guard assigned to a neglected edge of the Empire for incompetence. That made him much more dangerous, not only because of the implicit skills he would have to go with the position, but also because he had connections. To be a third order connection with the emperor himself was incredible enough. That would place him just outside the palace walls, someone in command of entire provinces of soldiers.
And Arwin and I had beaten him and fled custody.
I couldn’t see Oren’s face, but I could hear him clear his throat before replying to the damned legate. “My name is Oren. I hold black band legacy with the Lord of Clouds, and have dined at the table of the emperor’s personal chambers.” With each word, even by torchlight, I could see the defiant confidence flee Legate Karver’s face. “If you are responsible for the attack on our caravan earlier this evening, you will find I am no easy match.”
“My fight is not with you, Cleric, but with one who I have it on good information shared your carriage headed east. Two, actually—a young boy and girl, no older than fifteen years.” Legate Karver stepped forward into a small glade that left him exposed on all sides. If we were going to jump him, now was the time.