by S. Y. Lee
Clera smiled. “Jen. I like that name. Is your mother around?”
“No, she passed.”
“That’s sad.” Clera patted the girl on the head and tucked her messy brown hair behind her ears. “Can you do me a favor? Can you stand up straight and balance the apple on your head?”
“Please, my lady,” Jen’s father pleaded quietly. Clera didn’t acknowledge him, though Caitlin was sure she heard his appeal for mercy. He was close to tears as his daughter looked at him to tell her what to do. All he could do was put up a brave front and nod, and she leaned back against the tree and carefully placed the apple on top of her head. She did it on the first attempt, and quickly pulled her hands away like she was playing a game.
Clera clapped her hands and smiled, before turning around and walking back to her horse.
“I need to know that you understand me and how serious I am,” Clera said. While her words were addressed to the girl’s father and the valley dwellers, she was looking directly at Caitlin as she spoke.
“We’ll do whatever you want!” the man shouted, although that was followed by a chorus of yeas and nays. The valley community was divided on whether they should give in to the demands of their hostile visitors. It was hard to fault them. Caitlin suspected that most of them had lived their entire lives here, and while they didn’t stand a chance of fighting, they were reluctant to just abandon all that they’ve ever known.
“We can be as sweeping as a sickle in the fields,” Clera brandished her sword and swung it through the air for dramatic effect, “cutting down everything in its path. Or, we can be as precise as threading a string through a needle. Like putting an arrow through the apple on top of a little girl’s head. The choice is yours.”
She sneered at Caitlin. Her words harbored a double meaning, one of which was intended for Caitlin, the reluctant member of her troupe. Jen’s father was now conferring with his neighbors and friends as he tried to persuade them to listen to him and run away, but he was still facing some resistance. Caitlin wanted to warn them about how unscrupulous the men and women who surrounded them were and to urge them to leave, but she knew that would accomplish nothing. With the emblem of the Dark Flame on her chest, her words would only fall on deaf ears, and she had something more important to worry about right now. The apple on the little girl’s head wasn’t just for show. It was Clera’s perverse way of a loyalty test, and skill challenge, for Caitlin.
“Quiet!” Clera snapped and immediately, everyone stopped talking. Most people were staring at the blade in her hand as she pointed it at Caitlin.
“Prove your worth, Caitlin. You’re only here as a courtesy to Rylance, so show that you’re worthy of riding with us or you’ll suffer the same fate as all who oppose us.” While Clera maintained her smile, her eyes conveyed a different message that was clear to Caitlin: do or die.
Caitlin looked over to the tree where the girl was standing. It was about fifty feet away. That was a shorter distance from the first time Caitlin had shot a bow, at a boar in the forest just after she had woken up in this world. Of course, the stakes were higher now. Missing meant either wounding or killing the girl, or being killed herself by the Dark Flame.
Taking a deep breath, Caitlin slowly drew an arrow from her quiver and pulled back on the string of her bow. She heard Jen’s father beg and cry for her to stop, but she had no choice. She wanted to tell him that it would all be okay, but it seemed silly to do so while pointing an arrow at his daughter.
“While sitting on the horse? Impressive. You might just have a place beside me after all. Well, we’ll know soon,” Clera said. She had lowered her sword to her side, but it was still at the ready.
Jen, the little girl, was staring ahead at Caitlin, and there was no sign of fear in her eyes. She looked bored, like a child being told to stand in the corner for misbehaving. Caitlin shifted her gaze up to the apple and focused on the green circle against the dark background of the tree’s trunk, until all she could picture was the fruit on top the girl’s head. It was so quiet that Caitlin thought even the birds had stopped chirping to watch her take the shot. She breathed regularly, before exhaling until all the air from her lungs had left her. In that moment of stillness, she released the arrow.
There was a brief window of opportunity when time seemed to come to a standstill, between Caitlin letting the arrow fly and its subsequent striking of the apple perfectly in the middle. Everyone’s attention had turned towards the little girl and she let out a sharp yelp as the arrow hit bark and she ducked down, leaving the apple in place and nailed to the tree.
In that brief moment, all of the Dark Flame had their eyes trained on the apple, and Caitlin quickly drew another arrow and shot it at Clera’s right foot. It was a nearer and larger target, and Caitlin didn’t wait to see the result. She didn’t need to. Once the arrow left her bow, she had already kicked her horse and had it galloping forward towards the little girl when Clera screamed in pain.
As she rode past Jen, Caitlin leaned down to the side and grabbed the little girl by her arms and pulled her up, holding her close with one arm while hanging onto the reins with the other. Her horse kept galloping and she was about to crash into two of the Dark Flame, one of whom was a woman that Caitlin shared a tent with, when they both tugged at their horses’ reins in separate directions and barely avoided the rampaging steed.
With Clera unable to immediately bark off any commands, Caitlin had a considerable head start and she only had one concern on her mind, getting as far away as possible. Technically, she was currently in the midst of kidnapping a little girl, but given the circumstances, she doubted Jen or her father would mind.
Chapter 69
It wasn’t reassuring to watch the kite wobbling violently in front of them. Sarah gasped aloud when she saw Leo lose his grip on one hand. Luckily, he managed to hold on and Sarah heaved a sigh of relief before she started to worry about her own situation. She was barely hanging on to the beam next to her brother who, because of his heavier weight, found himself in the middle of the kite and close to his sister.
David had always been a fast learner, especially when it came to sports and any form of physical activity. It was one of the abilities that made him stand out as a youth soccer player. Once he saw someone perform a trick, he could mimic it almost perfectly in a few tries. It delighted his coaches who saw a future star on the field with boundless potential.
So, David was able to study their companions who had jumped off the mountain first as they navigated through the fog. He especially took note of how Karine adjusted her weight to steer the kite despite Leo’s unintentional sabotage, and gently rocked the kite to guide them to safe ground.
In stark comparison to Leo, Sarah just hung on and tried not to move at all, letting her brother dictate the flight. As a result, they were having a much smoother descent. David had also managed to adjust their course for landing as they approached the waterfall by veering right and left, and unlike the first kite off the mountain, they were headed straight for the ground before the Shining Bridge.
However, as they were getting closer to the ground, Sarah saw five men on horses riding towards the bridge at full speed. The men on horseback had seen Leo and Karine’s kite crash into the bridge, but they hadn’t looked up in the sky to see the second kite. It was too late for David to redirect the kite to avoid the horsemen, and Sarah heard the men yelling as the two groups headed for a collision course.
“We need to jump! Let go and roll!” David shouted to his sister. It took her a second to garner the courage to release her grip and fall to the ground and David followed. Together, the twins rolled on the ground and barely avoided being run over by the horses, but the riders weren’t so lucky. The giant kite crashed directly in between two of the horses and sent the group into disarray. The lead horse had fallen on its side and flung its rider over the cliff and down the waterfall. Sarah half-expected to hear a loud splash as she climbed to her feet, but there was none.
The four
remaining riders were trying to calm their horses as Sarah rushed to her brother’s side to help him up. There was a tiny gash on his cheek where he had rolled into a rock, but he was otherwise unharmed from the fall. The dazed David struggled to stand and he leaned on his sister for support. He then grabbed the axe from his waist when he realized that the riders had dismounted their horses and were standing between the twins and the bridge with their swords drawn.
“You killed my brother!” one of the men yelled angrily.
“Sorry! We didn’t mean to!” Sarah responded as she held on to her brother and pulled him a few steps back away from the outraged men. Behind them, she could see Karine and Leo sprinting towards them, though the men hadn’t taken notice. They were focused on the twins who had crashed into them. David wasn’t in any shape to take them on, and even if he was, he would be vastly outnumbered with no experience in fighting. Sarah knew she just needed to stall the men until their friends came to their aid.
“Please! Don’t hurt us!” she pleaded. The men didn’t just look angry. They wore tattered clothes that were stained red and their bodies were covered in scars, some so fresh that they were still bleeding. These men were no strangers to violence.
“Kill the boy and take the girl,” the man whose brother had been thrown off the cliff said. The other three men laughed and closed in on the siblings. David had recovered enough that he was able to stand on his own and he pushed Sarah behind him. He was ready to hold his ground and raised his axe over his right shoulder, poised to swing at the first person who stepped within range.
It was enough to make them hesitate as the men looked at each other, waiting for one of them to strike first. Then, two things happened in quick succession that doomed the men.
Sarah screamed at the top of her lungs and startled them. “Shut up!” the leader shouted and he started to advance towards her, when he suddenly fell forward onto his face. Rather, Karine had arrived and leapt onto the back of his head like a springboard, planting his face firmly into the ground with her foot, although he didn’t bounce back up.
Even as the other three men were pivoting around to see what had happened, the elf’s blades were already in motion. Two forearms still holding onto their swords dropped to the ground and before the third sword could swing at Karine, she already had one of her blades pointed at its wielder’s chest. If he moved just an inch more, she would draw blood and then some.
It had all happened so quickly that Sarah just stared at the two limbs on the ground, confused at first until she realized what the fleshy appendages were. The severings had been so clean-cut and precise that blood was only now started to form and slowly seep out from both forearms that had recently been separated from their owners. Sarah immediately turned around and heaved, spewing bits of the vegetable stew from breakfast onto the grass. The two men who had suffered at the end of Karine’s blades screamed in agony as they crumbled to their knees and clutched their bloodied stumps, attempting to stem the excessive blood loss.
“Who are you? Speak truthfully and I’ll stay my blade,” Karine said calmly. She hardly looked like she had sprinted all the way from the middle of the bridge and taken out four armed men in one swoop. The tip of her sword pressed against the man’s shirt and a small blot of blood materialized as Leo finally caught up. He was holding his sword upright, not knowing where to point it. The leader with his face in the ground was out cold while the other two men were groaning unintelligibly and writhing on the ground.
“We’re just travelers!” the last man standing said. He dropped his sword and raised both hands in surrender.
“Travelers don’t wear bloodstained clothes,” Karine growled. She rotated her wrist at a slight angle, twisting the tip of her sword against the man’s chest.
“Okay! Okay! We’re bandits! We just robbed a small town not far back,” the man said. The red blot in his shirt was getting bigger.
Karine considered his words for a while as she studied the blood stains on his shirt. She then looked at the other men to confirm her suspicions. Even though he had omitted the fact, she knew that they had murdered the people of the town for their money.
“Take their horses, let’s go,” Karine said to her companions as she swung her sword and cut off the last man’s right forearm, leaving him to share the fate of his accomplices.
Chapter 70
They hadn’t gone far. Once they were a fair distance away from the tree where everyone had been convened and she was satisfied that nobody could see them, Caitlin steered her mount off the well-trotted road and into the hills.
Under the cover of trees and bushes, Caitlin put a finger to her mouth and indicated to Jen to be quiet. The little girl nodded as she rested her head against Caitlin’s chest.
“You’ll see your father again soon,” Caitlin whispered. She held her breath when she heard horses galloping and men shouting from the direction of the road. As she had hoped, they continued on without any realization of Caitlin’s detour, and the hooves pounding on the ground soon faded.
She had always possessed a good sense of bearing and it didn’t take her long to make her way back to a hill that overlooked the giant tree down in the valley. Caitlin helped Jen off the horse and tied it to a tree. Before she turned away, she stroked the creature’s mane and patted it on the back for a job well done. Her relationship with the horse had started out rocky, but she was now getting the hang of riding it and appreciated its loyalty.
Taking Jen’s hand, she crept over to the edge of the hill where they had a bird’s eye view of the valley’s residents and the Dark Flame below. About twenty red uniforms were missing from their ranks to chase after Caitlin, but it was still a formidable army that she couldn’t confront head on. The people below were starting to get restless as several of Clera’s men and women tended to her injury. Caitlin could see the bloodied arrow on the ground next to the raven-haired commander and she was wincing as someone bandaged her foot.
The circle that the Dark Flame had formed around the civilians was now broken as they coalesced around Clera, leaving a path to the south unguarded. It was where they had come from.
Caitlin removed the quiver from her back and counted her arrows. She only had fifteen shots available, though at this distance and angle, she was confident that none would go wasted. She looked down at the people below, and she spotted Alister standing on the edge of the crowd. It wasn’t hard to see him in his ridiculous clothes. Surprisingly, he was looking up and straight at Caitlin. She blinked and wondered if he was just staring up aimlessly at the sky, but then he nodded at her and pointed at something near the crowd.
Intrigued, Caitlin followed the invisible line from his long digit until she saw what he was indicating to her. It was the same cottage that Clera had entered to retrieve the apple. Caitlin saw a pot balanced on metal rods that was boiling over a fire outside. The fire was dangerously close to the cottage and a pile of firewood leaning against the flammable structure.
“Jen, I need you to do something,” she said to the little girl, who looked content to be lying on her stomach beside her, like they were enjoying a nice day playing outside. She had been peering over the edge of the hill too at her father.
“Okay. Do I have to hold an apple over my head again?”
“Ha! No, nothing like that. Sorry about that by the way, but I wouldn’t have done it if I thought for a second I might have missed,” Caitlin smiled kindly. “No, I need you to go down there to the south exit really quietly and don’t let the bad guys in red see you. When you see the signal, call all your friends and your father over to you okay? And then you’ve got to tell them that they need to keep running. Don’t turn back. Find help and somewhere safe. Do you understand?”
Jen pushed herself off the ground and sat up. “What about you?”
“I’ll be okay. I need to make sure they don’t come after you.”
The little girl thought about Caitlin’s proposition for a while before nodding. “Okay. What’s the signal?”
“There will be a fire.”
“Okay.”
“Good, go now. I’ll wait for you to get in place. Be careful,” Caitlin said.
Jen got to her feet and was halfway towards the foot of the hill when she suddenly turned around and ran back to Caitlin, giving her a quick hug. Caitlin could feel her eyes welling up as she let go of the little girl and watched her make her way back down to the path. She thought of her two younger sisters back in Sydney and wondered what they were doing at that moment. Had they discovered that she was missing yet?
Jen was very nimble on her feet. She made it down in no time and hid behind a tree. Caitlin gave her a thumbs up when the girl glanced over at her, before pulling out all her arrows and laying them on the ground so that they were easily accessible. She wanted to minimize the time she had to take to notch the next arrow after she shot one.
The way she saw it, she had two distinct advantages over the Dark Flame. They were all armed with swords while she had a bow. In addition, they were all down in the valley with only two points of exits, and she had the high ground. These two factors taken together, gave Caitlin hope that she just might pull off an audacious rescue.
She was supremely confident in her archery skills, which felt surreal to her. Before waking up in the cabin, she had never held a bow before, and yet now she shot one like William Tell. She remembered reading stories as a child about the fabled folk hero and his adventures. There was even a time when she tried to convince her mother to let her take up archery, but her school in Sydney didn’t offer it as an after-class activity and it would have been too expensive to get private lessons.
Caitlin knelt on one knee and steadied herself, giving the bow string a few practice plucks, before picking up an arrow and notching it. Below, Alister had made his way over to the entrance of the cottage and was leaning against the open doorway. Caitlin paused, uncertain of what to do, but the peculiar man nodded at her and motioned with his hands for her to act. Had the Dark Flame not been so focused on their commander, they would have noticed his abnormal behavior and wild gesticulations.