by Ed Greenwood
She blinked up at green leaves blazing emerald in bright morning sunlight, and a blue and cloudless sky above them, over her head. Where by all the watching gods-?
In a wild forest somewhere, it seemed, but how…?
A forest stream was chuckling softly past, somewhere beyond her pain-wracked feet, the smoke she’d smelled was wafting from a small fire yonder, mingled now with smells of cooking meat and fish, and-and one of the most handsome young men she’d ever seen was washing and bandaging her feet.
Her bare, scratched, and cut feet!
In a sudden rush the night came back to her: the fear, the horrible growls, her frantic flight into menacing darkness, crashings close behind her, being cruelly bound and carried, blindfolded as men lugged her like a sack, pawing her-she was unbound now, thank the Dragon! — and some sort of fight around her in the dark, between outlaws and the king’s men…
Outlaws would be cruel, murderous rapists, unshaven and filthy, hardly likely to wash anyone’s feet. Nor would they untie a captive.
So this man had probably rescued her, and must serve the king. Or did he?
He’d not looked up at her, though her sudden fast and hard breathing as she remembered it all must have told him she was awake. The Lady Narantha raised herself on one elbow, suddenly acutely aware that she was wearing only her crumpled and torn, once-splendid nightrobe, and a strange man was kneeling at her feet, where he could see more than enough of her!
Fear and fury surged in Narantha, and she wanted to kick him and shriek at him for being the lustful villain that he was… but he wasn’t done binding her feet yet, and… gods, yes, her back was aching. Oooh. Worse, she was beginning to feel bruises and stiffnesses all over herself. Gods above, she probably couldn’t even stand without his help.
Narantha clenched her fists until she felt the sharp twinges of her own nails digging into her palms, and choked down the furious words she’d been about to spit. She needed this peasant, whoever he was, just to find her way back to a road and some Purple Dragons to escort her to Lord Hezom-that thrice-cursed, stinking backwoods lowlife that Father had for some insane reason decided she needed to be tutored by! Why, the only tutoring she’d allow A particularly strong stab of pain brought her attention back to the here and now. Wincing, Narantha looked around.
She was lying on a fern-cloaked sandbar beside a forest stream. A snared-she sniffed; yes, rabbit and two river brownfin; those were smells she knew-were roasting on arched-over saplings, tied just above a small fire that had been lit on a bare rock.
Beside the fire lay the largest leaf she’d ever seen, heaped with fresh-picked buds of some sort that small brown birds were swooping and darting at. The man at her feet was shooing them away with long sweeps of one brown-tanned hand, without seeming to even look their way. A long white scar cut across the palm of that hand.
He wore dusty, dirt-smeared leather armor-foresters’ garb-yet looked like a king. Not like a blood-son of King Azoun, Narantha told herself hastily. Rather, he had the same quietly commanding manner and air of alert intelligence as Duke Bhereu or Baron Thomdor… or the king himself.
Then he looked up at her, this dirt-smudged stranger, and Narantha was lost.
Fearless yet friendly blue-gray eyes gazed at her out of a square-jawed, quietly regal face-that split suddenly with a warm, welcoming, kindly smile.
A smile, somehow, that she wanted to earn again and again. Her heart started to beat faster.
“Well met, Lady Fair,” he said quietly. “I am Florin Falconhand, son of Hethcanter and Imsra of that name, of Espar.”
He looked aside, and made a swift lunge that sent a bird whirring away with a bud falling from its beak. Deftly he caught the little green orb out of the air, and put it back on the leaf. “Forgive me,” he added, “but the wood-riskins are intent upon stealing our morningfeast.”
“Where’s Delbossan?” she blurted. “And where am I?”
Florin looked back at her and spread his hands. “As to your first, I know not, though if you mean the Master Delbossan who is Horsemaster to Hezom, Lord of Espar, I know him. As well as any Esparran does; Espar is not so large a place. A good man. As to your second: here. In the forest. The King’s Forest, to tell larger truth, hard by the stream called the Dathyl.”
“Wherever that is,” she snorted. “The King’s Forest covers half the kingdom!”
“So it does,” he agreed with a smile, reaching out one hand as swift as a striking snake to grasp a diving riskin, turn, and throw it out over the stream. The bird chirped shrilly, obviously astonished to find itself no longer racing at a tempting heap of buds, but headed in quite a different direction.
Florin gave it a bright chirp in return, and it answered him, sounding almost rueful, as it vanished across the Dathyl into a dark stand of trees.
Narantha stared at him. Could he speak with birds? Or was he crazed-headed, and Then this Esparran forester brought the same hand that had just caught a bird-the same unwashed hand-down on her own ankle. “You’re fair cut up, and no doubting,” he said, and shifted aside on his haunches, as graceful as any dancer, to reach behind himself and pluck something from a pack.
“ ’Tis unwise,” he added gently, “to go out into the forest-into any woods-without good boots on your feet, Lady. Yet fair fortune is with you this day: I never travel without a spare pair.”
He was gently pulling boots on over her bandaged feet: great horrible heavy man’s boots, made for feet half again larger than hers. His feet, of course. And what was he doing now?
Stuffing… yes, stuffing more bandages into the boots! Wadded roll after none-too-clean-looking roll, into the open, gaping tops of the boots, thrusting them firmly down around her feet (fresh pain). Whereupon he started bending her feet with his hands “Owww!”
— twisting them around, his fingers sliding past her aches and bandages like deft talons, shoving wadded cloth here, and there, and everywhere around her ankles and calves “What’re you doing? ”
“Pray pardon, Lady, but the boots are too large for your feet. They must be packed tight so you don’t wobble as you walk, or they’ll rub you raw and you’ll probably very swiftly step right out of them, or turn an ankle and fall.”
The forester shoved a last rolled-up bandage in, thrust it down with two firm fingers, and sat back, satisfied. She need never know that boots, pack, and bandages had all come from the foresters’ cache. Not that there was much worry, that oh-so-high-and-mighty Lady Narantha Crownsilver would know anything at all about foresters’ caches-to say nothing of foresters. Still, even if she’d already deemed him a faceless servant, that was no call for him to give her rudeness. “I must warn you further, Lady. Don’t keep walking if your feet begin to hurt in one place repeatedly. We’ll be stopping betimes; I’ll have to wash and dress them often.”
The Lady Narantha’s eyes blazed. “You expect me to walk? With my feet all cut up?”
Florin shrugged. “You must,” he told her quietly. “Once the wolves and owlbears catch your scent, they’ll follow you. If you can’t keep ahead of them, they’ll eat you. Slowly, if it’s an owlbear that catches you. They like cruel sport with their food.”
“What?” Narantha shrieked, in a decidedly unladylike scream that must have been heard by owlbears in the most distant reaches of the kingdom. “Get me out of here! I am a Crownsilver, man-a Crownsilver! Oldest and highest of all noble families in Cormyr! Get me out of here at once! I command you, in the name of the king, whose Decree of Rights Noble obligates you to the very cost of your life: Take me forthwith back to Suzail! I desire to be out of this horrible wilderness without delay!”
The forester rose, as liquid-graceful as any sword-dancer Narantha had ever seen at any family revel, and stood tall and broad-shouldered above her. Frowning.
“I’ve never been to Suzail,” he murmured, telling her plain truth-and then turned to look across the Dathyl in case his face betrayed his great falsehood as he added, “I know not the way.”
/> Even a child would know that if he could find the road-that lay everywhere in that direction-he couldn’t fail to reach Suzail along it. The royal roads were not so winding as all that. South through Waymoot to Suzail, following clear and well-maintained signposts all the way.
Even a child, aye… but a young noble lass?
Aye, she wasn’t snarling disbelieving curses at him for being a liar, now. She was staring at him in dismay.
“I can and will get you to Espar,” he told her solemnly, “but-”
“Villain! Sneaking, lying whoreson of an outlaw! Dung-faced peasant! Disloyal, impudent dog of a thieving, maiden-ravishing dolt! How dare- ”
“But it will take a few days,” Florin continued, raising his voice effortlessly to override hers without shouting in the slightest, “because we’re way out in the wilderness, out where the big beasts roam.”
Another great lie… but the Lady Narantha was staring at him in fresh despair, aghast.
“A few days? ” she echoed, disbelievingly-and then found her feet in a hobbling rush and started to hit him, slapping and pummeling his unyielding chest wildly with her small, pale fists. “Incompetent! Ignoramus! Wretched, slug-ignorant stonehead of a lazy, useless fool of a servant! Whoring, cheating, horsefaced (gasp) good-for-nothing-”
Ignoring her rain of blows, Florin shrugged and calmly turned away to lace up his pack, paying no heed when she belabored his backside, nor even when she kicked him hard up between the legs from behind, jarring her toes on what had to be a hard metal codpiece.
Straightening and swinging the pack onto his shoulder with a hummed tune, for all the world as if she weren’t there at all, the tall forester strode away along the bank of the stream, his legs long and his gait eerily quiet.
“Where d’you think you’re going? Come back here! Come back, I say, you worthless-”
The silent lout strode on, and with a snarl of outraged exasperation Narantha started after him in a wobble-booted rush, launching herself into a stumbling, splay-footed trot that carried her over one dead tree, caught and scraped her damp-gowned leg painfully on another, and hurled her through a thorny and thankfully dead and crackling-dry bush into a hard nose-first meeting with the ground.
The very muddy, reeking ground, all roots and hurriedly slithering leaf-worms and “Come back!” she cried, suddenly terrified of being left alone in this vast forest, lost and… and hunted…
“Please!” she sobbed. “You-man! Forester!” Frantically she fought to recall his name, and in tears shrieked, “Florin, I beg of you! A rescue! Succor! Aid! ”
Weeping openly as she struggled up to her knees, blinded by tears and truly miserable in her helplessness, the Lady Narantha Crownsilver did not hear her departing rescuer half-smile and murmur very quietly, “What? All of those? Do I look like an army? Lazy, good-for-nothing peasant whoreson that I am?”
“ Please come back,” she pleaded, choking on her tears. “Good Florin, please! ”
Good Florin grinned, took another long step as he carefully wiped away his mirth and assumed a stern look instead-and whirled around and stalked back the way he’d come.
Gods, he hoped he’d be able to keep this act up until he got her back to Delbossan. This was an adventure, all right, but…
His face was calm and his expression gravely unreadable as he walked right past her, back to the sandbar. “By the Queen of the Forest, where are my wits? I was so appalled at your lowborn rudeness that I almost forgot morningfeast.”
Wallowing on her knees with fresh rage rising inside her, Narantha Crownsilver stared at the forester, dumbfounded. My… lowborn rudeness?
Lowborn?
Rudeness?
“All praise Mielikki, they’ve not yet started to burn,” Florin said, plucking the sizzling fish away from the fire.
Narantha went on staring at him, open-mouthed. How dare he Was that really how she seemed to him?
Florin turned. “Lady,” he said pleasantly, holding out a great green leaf with a slab of brownfin steaming on it, “morningfeast is served.”
Narantha found her mouth suddenly flooded and aching. So hungry was she, really smelling the fish now, that she came crawling mutely back to him, almost clawing aside branches in her haste.
“Don’t eat the leaf,” Florin told her, “but use it as a platter, to keep the hot juices from scalding you or staining your gown. Hold its edge up-so-and nothing will run out. ’Tis safe to lap and lick at the leaf, to get all the juice. Eat merrily; there’re no fishbones left.”
Fearing being burnt, Narantha nipped tentatively at one end of the fillet. Ye gods, ’twas good! Overly hot, yes, and she found herself gobbling to keep her lips from searing, but… ahh, wonderful.
Long, strong fingers took her well-licked leaf away from her, and replaced it with another, this one cupped around a small handful of the green buds. Narantha peered at them curiously then looked up questioningly.
“Cavanter buds,” Florin told her, pointing at a nearby bush, “from yonder shrub. Only pleasant to eat this time of year, when they’re green and swelling. Truly mouth-watering if you’ve butter to pan-fry them in.”
Narantha’s mouth was still watering. She watched Florin bite into a bud as if it was an olive or radish, and did the same. Chewy… unfamiliar… a bit like carrot in texture, but fried bread in taste. Nothing so spectacular as the brownfin, but… pleasant.
The forester had made his fish and buds vanish in a trice, and was at work on the rabbit, pulling it apart on another leaf. Thankfully, his knife had already made the head disappear, and it seemed to have cooked so thoroughly that it came apart like custard as he pulled on the legs. In moments another leaf was held out to her. “Bones in this,” Florin warned her. “Not to be eaten. Spit them onto this leaf; nowhere else.”
Narantha had eaten rabbit many times before, usually covered in the choicest simmered sauces prepared in the kitchens of many high houses and even the palace, but this-sauceless and too hot, stinging her fingers as she bit and gobbled-this overmatched all. The best food she’d ever eaten.
It was gone while she still ached for more, and she never noticed that the forester had slipped his portion onto her leaf as she gnawed-nor that she’d been moaning softly, in sheer pleasure.
Licking her fingers hungrily, Narantha sat back and stared at the greasy leaves. In all the feasts she’d eaten, as far back as she could remember, she’d never tasted anything so fine.
Florin was washing his hands-and his chin too, it seemed-in the stream. “Come,” he said gently. “We’ve a long way to travel before nightfall, to escape the beasts. Wash.”
Narantha blinked at him, her moment of bliss gone.
“Are you suggesting,” she asked icily, “I should go on my knees and lap up water like a dog?”
“Only a little. Drinking too much at once isn’t good. Use the sand to scour your mouth and hands.”
She made no move, but stared at him, eyes smoldering.
The forester calmly tossed handfuls of water onto the fire, dousing it amid puffs of smoke and loud hissings, until he could rake it apart and wet it down thoroughly. The largest twigs went into the water, thrust down into the submerged flank of the sandbar and buried there. The leaves they’d eaten from were served the same way.
Then Florin scooped up dry sand and cast it across the scattered ashes of the fire, rinsing his hands in the Dathyl once more. “Wash,” he told her firmly, sounding for all the world like one of her childhood nurses.
“And just who are you, man,” she told him back just as firmly, “to give orders to me?”
Florin gave her the same sort of “old wisdom looking at her with grave disappointment” look that her long-dead uncles had favored her with. “The scent of the fish and meat on you will come off on every branch or leaf you touch, leaving a clear trail even a half-witted wolf or owlbear-and there are no half-witted hunting beasts-can follow. You’ll lead them right to your own throat. To say nothing of the stinging flies and worse th
at’ll find it much sooner than that, and buzz around your eyes day and night through. Wash.”
Defeated, the fair flower of the Crownsilvers gave him a wordless snarl and went to the water, turning her back on him.
“Relieve yourself over there,” he added, pointing off into the trees. “No thorns or stinging leaves. Yes, yon bushes are thicker, but you’ll be burning or itching for days if you head that way.”
Narantha’s back stiffened, but she made no reply.
“If you wait to go later,” Florin added calmly, “remember this: what you leave behind is like shouting your whereabouts to the hunting beasts.”
Wordlessly Narantha went where he’d directed. “Use the big pale leaves, no others,” he added-and suspected, by the manner in which the tangled vines she’d vanished behind immediately danced and rustled, that she’d made an immediate and very rude gesture by way of reply.
He looked all around for signs of their stay, scraping the sands with the side of his boot to do away with the prints of boots, knees, and hands.
When the Lady Narantha emerged from the bushes, glaring at him mutely, Florin murmured, “Please follow me”-and walked into the stream.
Narantha looked incredulous. “What are you doing? ”
Standing knee-deep in the Dathyl, the forester replied, “Always do this when leaving a forest camp. Doing so makes it harder for the more intelligent monsters to track you from your cookfires to wherever you next sleep. Elsewise, they’ll soon be biting out your throat.”
The flower of the Crownsilvers looked down at the unfamiliar and overlarge boots on her feet, her lips drawn back in distaste. “It’s going to be cold and wet,” she snapped. “I hate being wet.”
“Best get it over with quickly, then,” Florin said briskly. “Always face what you mislike, do battle with it, and get it done: all the more time then for what you prefer, yes?”
Narantha glared at him. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you? Humiliating me every chance you get, mocking my ignorance of forest ways, as much as telling me I’m utterly useless. I hate you. Gallant men of Cormyr — true men of Cormyr-never stoop to treat a lady so.”