by Jenny Moss
“People always want more.”
“Yes,” I agreed, watching him. “What do you want, then?”
“I want what’s best for my country, my family. I want to honor both.”
“Deor, Deor, Deor,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “Deor.”
“Why is this place so important?” But as the question left my lips, I was aware again of the beauty around me.
“If you do not understand why, if you do not already feel it, I cannot make you understand.”
“Now you sound like Eldred, even Fyren.”
Kenway was silent for a moment. “It was Eldred who had you released from prison, you know.”
“Eldred? That couldn’t be.”
He nodded. “It was.”
I would not feel gratitude to Eldred for that. He wouldn’t have released me because of any care for me.
I watched Sir Kenway cut a piece off an apple with his knife. He stuck it in his mouth and I again thought of our almost kiss. He looked at me, our eyes meeting. Flustered, I looked down.
He was still. I didn’t want to look up at him. I didn’t like these feelings.
I was aware of our isolation from the world in this quiet place. No father to interrupt us. No queen between us.
I felt him looking at me. I forced myself to look up and meet his eyes. He sat with his legs drawn up, his arms on his knees. His hands weren’t moving now, the knife, the half-eaten apple in his relaxed hands.
He put the apple down, the knife down beside it. I thought he might come to me, but he didn’t. He kept watching me, and I, him.
Finally, he stood. Without a word, he walked off from me, going down to the pond. He cupped his hands and splashed some water on his face. He stayed there, looking out at the water.
Chapter Seventeen
It was barely light when we saddled the horses. Sir Kenway led this time, taking us through the dark caves. We left by a different opening than we’d entered.
“Do you think we’ve lost Fyren’s men?” I asked.
He nodded. “Let us hope.”
We went south out of the mountains and into the rocky hills. We were no longer on a path and rode side by side. The wind was calm, and our pace slow.
It was a long day.
“We’re almost to the village,” he said.
“Village?” I asked, glad for the news. I was ready to be out of the saddle.
“I have not visited in a year or more,” he said, his voice tired. “It rests beside a river, which used to be wide and deep. But I hear it’s much different now. We’ll stay there the night and start again early in the morning.”
“Do you know someone there?” The person he needed to find couldn’t be in this village. I’d assumed Eldred had sent Kenway for someone of wealth or standing. Perhaps a powerful lord with an army at the ready? But how could I not have heard of such a man?
Kenway paused. “I do know someone there. Malcolm worked for my father for many years. He taught me to use a sword when I was eight. He’s a skilled fighter.”
“Your friend, then?” I asked.
He shrugged a shoulder. “We’re not of the same rank, but I like him well enough.”
“So we are to visit him?” I asked.
But Kenway would say no more.
The hills grew less riddled with rocks and had little vegetation. We wound through them and headed toward a particularly large one. I could see it flattened out, with white boulders atop it. I wondered if we were close to the village because Sir Kenway seemed more alert.
Soon, we were on the hill, pushing our weary horses up.
“Erce is on the other side,” Sir Kenway said.
“Erce?” I asked. “That is our destination?”
“You know it?” he asked, his eyes suddenly on me.
“Only recently,” I said, watching him back. “Fyren mentioned it to Eldred.”
He was startled. “What did he say about it?”
I prodded my horse, trying to think. But exhaustion pulled at me. I wanted to be at the top of the hill. It was not a steep incline, but this day’s journey seemed endless. Knowing we were close to food and rest made me want it all the more. “Much has happened in the few days since then…If I remember right, Fyren asked if Eldred had heard anything about Erce.”
Kenway was clearly bothered by this news.
“What is it?” I asked.
He did not answer.
“Must you always keep me in the dark?” I was exasperated with not knowing.
He hesitated, looking over at me. “Erce is the ancient name of the village. It was renamed years ago—it is now called New Place. I didn’t think Fyren knew that.”
“Do you think his men will be there?” I asked in a rush.
He gave me a quick look. “Eldred knew this? That Fyren knew of Erce?”
“Yes.”
“You are certain?” he asked.
“Certain. It was the night I was released from the dungeon.”
He said nothing else, so I was quiet as well. But he was clearly more agitated.
Unease came over me as we rode on. We were almost to the top, which I was thankful for. But something felt very wrong. Felt, felt. So frustrating! I was turning into such a sensitive creature. I did not understand, nor want, these new feelings.
I tried to still my unease by thinking of the peaceful pond within the caves. I remembered that calm, holding it. That peace sank deep inside of me and rested.
But then—something else was there, at the edges. I tried to push it out. But it was dark, and it chewed and scratched. What was this feeling, so intense, so relentless and fevered? And now, it was no longer at the edges. It soared into me, dark and black, like flying ashes.
“Kenway?” I asked. “Are we still being followed?”
He looked around quickly. “Why do you ask? I see no one.” His eyes combed my face. “What’s wrong, Shadow?” He grabbed my reins and slowed both our horses. “You are so pale.”
“Kenway.”
“What is it? Are you ill?”
“The village…all is not well there.”
“We cannot even see Erce from here. It’s on the other side of the hill,” he said, waving toward it.
“Do you smell smoke?” I asked.
He stared at me and something came into his eyes. He pushed my reins into my hands and rode quickly up the hill.
I was right behind him. At the peak, we looked down.
Below us was the idyllic spot where a village once rested. Erce—tucked into the bend of what used to be a wide river, now trickled down to a stream. Silver birch forests stretched out to the east and to the south, with no end in sight. The range of mountains lay to the north.
“What’s happened?” Sir Kenway asked. He slapped his horse and tore down the hill into the charred remains of the town. I followed more slowly.
Black huts were in shambles on both sides of the road, their collapsed roofs still smoldering. Fragile flakes of ash blew into my face, upon my lips, as I tried to find Kenway. I arrived at the heart of the village: a simple stone meeting-house, gray and whole.
The stench was great.
Kenway stood in the doorway, the color drained from his face. I could not see inside the dark room, but I knew those inside were dead. Still, it wasn’t bodies I smelled, but something else.
“Come away from there,” I said, a heavy dread upon my heart.
“I have to see if anyone still lives, Shadow.” As he crossed the threshold, I dropped to the ground. Then, I followed him.
At first, all I saw was red and gray. Blood on stone and skin.
A ghastly scene.
So many. This one stabbed in the stomach. Here, a throat deeply cut. There, a slice across the chest. I covered my mouth, unable to move. Sir Kenway hurried from one to the other, touching a shoulder, moving hair off a face.
Women, too. Open eyes, glassy and blue.
No children. I sighed in relief.
Broken spears and
blood-stained daggers were scattered across the room. Sad light strained in through the few windows, their glass shattered, bows and unused arrows beneath their sills. What madness happened here? A village, destroyed. I knelt down, touching the stone floor.
I felt their sharp fear before they died. Their fear for one another. The panic. Pain in my stomach. I fell to my knees. I could not remove my hand from the floor. It seemed frozen to the stone. I was connected to every one who lay there, dead. I felt the confusion here in the last moments of their lives, their agony as they watched one another die.
Such loss. How they loved one another: fathers, wives, friends, neighbors. All gone. They’d died together.
Sir Kenway was beside me. “Come. Let us leave. Not one of them still breathes.”
I looked into his eyes, trying to find something to hold on to, something to keep from falling into this blackness. “They were so afraid,” I whispered.
He nodded, not knowing what I felt.
While he put his ear to one more mouth in hopes of finding breath, I leaned over a woman in the corner of this tragic place. Around her neck was an iron-engraved medallion, similar to the wooden one Elene wore. I was drawn to it. Touching the metal, despite the blood upon it, I felt the fear abate and a sense of peace wash over me. I slipped it off her still neck and slid the necklace into my own pocket.
Chapter Eighteen
Sir Kenway led the horses to the slow-moving stream in the middle of the riverbed. He had not said anything about the man he’d known.
I sat on the bank, my back to the town, my hands shaking with rage. I could not see Kenway’s face as he fed the horses.
Was Fyren capable of ordering this horrific act? Such a thing didn’t emerge from a mere lust for power or a desire for vengeance or the need to restore the true line to the throne. All of which could be the motive, though not the excuse, for Fyren’s murder of his cousin and the men around her. But the massacre in this village was nothing but evil.
We’d found a large fresh grave behind the meeting-house. The murderers, it seemed, took care of their own.
“At least the villagers killed as many of them,” Sir Kenway had said, his face still pale, as we walked around the large hole.
He approached me now, leading the horses. I noticed the blood-stained weapons he’d bound and tied to his saddle.
Still trembling, I stood to take the reins. “Why would Fyren massacre a village?”
“Have you been to Erce before?” Sir Kenway asked, his eyes blazing.
“Here? I’ve never left the castle.”
“Did you know someone here?”
“Why do you ask me?”
“Before, when we were approaching the town, you seemed to know something not before your eyes. Do you know what took place here?”
I hesitated. “No,” I said, which was true. But I couldn’t confide in him about this sickness that had me in its grip, this strange sensitivity now possessing me.
“You never know, do you? All these things, your secret rendezvous with Fyren, your sleeping as the queen was murdered, your panic as we approached Erce…and you claim you don’t know anything?”
I stared at him in disbelief. This was too much. “What do you accuse me of? Attacking the village? While I was running from the castle with you?”
“You admitted you were friends with Fyren, the man who ordered this,” he said with a vicious voice, waving his arm toward the ruins of the town.
I felt the heat in my cheeks. “I am sorry about your father’s man—Malcolm, was it? Although I cannot believe that you would feel pain over the death of a mere villager.”
He flew up into his saddle. “I think we’ve said enough here. Get on your horse.”
“We cannot leave them like this!” I yelled as he rode away. The thought of them lying dead, not tended to, dug deep into me. They needed a proper burial, to be laid to rest.
He turned in his saddle. “Come on!”
I followed him, across the stream and into the hills above it. Did he really think I was involved in such wickedness? His constant suspicion tore at me.
I brooded as we rode through a forest filled with silver trees. These birches hovered over us, flourishing on this side of the old river as well. Light filtered down through their soft green foliage. This was a beautiful, but sad and haunting place.
I didn’t look at Kenway. He said nothing to me.
The images of the dead kept returning. I no longer felt their fear, but I remembered feeling it. I knew those people’s minds, or at least their feelings, in their last moments. I panicked a little to think of it now.
I tried to sort it all out. I knew so very little. The queen was dead. Eldred was dead. We had come to Erce, a town Eldred and Fyren had just discussed. It had to have some importance. But what?
Maybe it wasn’t the town, it was the person. Was it this Malcolm? I did not think he was among the dead. Surely I would have noticed if Kenway had seen his body.
Was it he whom Eldred had sent us after?
Sir Kenway and I were on this mad journey because of the adviser, who was living beyond his grave through us. Kenway carried this knightly oath of duty too far, I thought. Why did we trust the old man so?
I could not remember a time when Eldred was not there, at the side of the queen, and so beside me, too. How I’d hated those watchful eyes of his, following me everywhere. The queen’s ladies could be right in their laughing guesses: Maybe he was my father. Absurd, I knew, but it would explain his hovering.
I did not like the way he’d treated me, but then I saw Lord Leofwine’s treatment of his son. Perhaps that’s what fathers did to their children.
I admired the wise counsel Sir Kenway had given his father despite the abuse the old lord had heaped on him. But I didn’t understand his concern about his father’s past. Why did he worry so about a man who was so cruel to him? I would not.
We were moving quickly now. My pride kept me from asking Kenway any questions. I was concerned we’d be ambushed by those who’d attacked the town. Were they the same men who had been following us? What I didn’t understand was why we were headed south, back toward the castle.
At an overgrown area, Kenway dismounted and dropped to the ground, with his fingers to the earth, pressing a hoof-print. Then I knew.
“You cannot, Sir Kenway. You cannot mean to do it.”
He ignored me and got back on his horse. We pushed on through the woodland.
“An army of men must have attacked them, to have killed so many.”
He stopped then and pulled my horse short. “I must do this.”
“I understand your desire for vengeance,” I said. “I feel the same. But this is a poor decision. You are just one knight.”
“Can you ever just agree?” he snapped. “I will hear no more about it.”
We continued to ride until the horses were exhausted. I wondered if it was Lord Leofwine’s cruel accusation of cowardice that pushed Sir Kenway on so relentlessly. This was madness. We would both be killed. Or captured and returned to the castle.
But I could not leave him. I feared it was Kenway who would be hurt. And I knew he was right in his desire to punish those who had committed such evil.
It was not until the sun was low that we found them.
The smell of cooking drifted to us. Loud male laughter and the whinnies of horses could be heard. We exchanged a quick glance and slid off our horses, leading them quietly back down the path. Tying them up a good distance away, Sir Kenway told me to stay where I was. He would be back.
I sighed. “I’ll come with you,” I said, stunned at my own words. I felt as if I’d been in Erce when it was attacked, not just with the villagers as they died, but one of them. It was as if I were a part of them, or they were a part of me. I wanted their murderers punished, even if it meant my own death. “I can help you, Kenway.”
He untied the bundle of weapons from his saddle and lowered them to the ground. “How will you do that?”
“Give me a dagger.”
“Have you ever used a dagger?”
I had not. I picked up one with an unbent blade and a black handle. I wiped it against the bark of a tree, to chip off the dried blood. It stubbornly remained. “This one is good.”
He rummaged through the pile, taking three more daggers.
I put my hand on his arm. “Have you taken a man’s life before?”
He gave me a long look, which revealed he was not new to killing. “Are you certain you can do this, Shadow?”
“I’m ready.”
I followed him through the trees. The underbrush was thick only in one spot around the perimeter of the men’s camp. It was there we huddled together, listening and peering in at them.
These warriors wore the royal colors of red and black, blood still on their tunics. Six of them sat on logs around the large fire, taking deep drinks of what was obviously spirits. Twenty horses or more were tied to trees beside the camp.
A lone soldier stood watch over the prisoners. My heart dropped when I saw there were only two men, a girl, and two women. This was all who survived the attack? Where were the rest of the children?
The villagers had their hands tied behind their backs. They sat on the forest floor, their worried faces glowing in the firelight. One of the men spoke quietly to the others. He had thick black hair and a commanding presence I could detect even from a distance. A large woman with a weathered face stayed close to him and to the flaxen-haired girl next to her.
The other man was injured, blood across his belly. He rested against a rock, breathing deeply, but watchful. Another woman, young, slender, with high cheekbones and a lost look, sat between the men.
“Bring me some supper,” said their guard to his comrades. He looked longingly at the roasted rabbit, licking his lips. “And some wine.”
“There’ll be no wine for you on your watch,” said one man, more clear-eyed than the others. He removed his chain mail, the only one to wear it. His rich and fine clothes suggested he was the leader.
“I don’t know why I had to take the night watch, my lord. I killed more of them than anyone. Why, it was me that captured this one whole.” He gestured a dirty thumb toward the black-haired man.