by White, Gwynn
“Mal, what’s—?”
Her half-formed question evaporated as we continued to tilt. Blood pounded in my ears with each beat of my heart as weightlessness took hold for just a moment. My feet left the wooden slats of the cart’s floor and I fell head over heels until landing hard against the bound and tethered canvas siding.
The taut material snagged on a rock outside the overturned carriage and a gash as wide as I was tall appeared in front of me, the wicked point of the guilty rock no more than a few inches from my face as we skidded past it. Then the front of the cart slammed into something solid, like a tree, and the four of us in the back were flung forward like so many sacks of grain.
I landed in a pile with Arwin and the other woman, my arms and legs tangled with theirs. The woman was awake now and screaming shrilly, her voice so loud next to my ear that her words were incoherent.
“Silence!” Oren ordered. Somehow he’d managed to grip the edge of the bench and stop himself from being thrown alongside us, and now he sat crouched between the open-hanging flap at the back of the wagon and the gash in the canvas that used to be the siding. “We didn’t hit a bump in the road.” His bright eyes shone against the darkness. “There is someone out there.”
Beneath me, Arwin groaned in protest, and I spent the next few seconds disengaging our jumbled bodies as best I could. The other woman was less than helpful. She clamped a clammy hand against my face and shoved off hard to right herself, and even then, there was no offer to help me or Arwin get to our feet.
Faintly, I was aware of something wet trickling down the side of my face.
“Oren, can you see out there?” I asked, only barely able to see him.
The lights of his eyes shook. “I can see well enough in the dark, but whoever it is remains shrouded. They are actively hiding, perhaps waiting for us to expose ourselves.”
I lent a hand to Arwin, who accepted it and rose to her feet. “So what do we do?” she asked. She still sounded out of breath, and I felt a pang of guilt for having elbowed her earlier, even if it had been accidental.
“We find out what they want and we give it to them,” the other woman said. “Once they have whatever they’re after, they have no reason to kill us.”
“No reason to keep us alive, either,” Oren countered. His eyes glanced toward the front of the carriage. “I don’t hear anything up front; maybe the harness broke and the horse escaped. If we can find it…”
“Then one, maybe two of us can ride to safety,” the woman said. “I can ride to Briarsworth and send back aid!”
Arwin stepped up, placed a hand on the woman’s shoulder, and spun her around hard. “I think you just want to save your own skin! You don’t care if the Depths take the rest of us.”
“I find your accusation insulting,” the woman sniffed. “Besides, you know that what I’m saying is true. We can’t all make it out of here; why should I not look after myself first?” She spun in a small circle. “I don’t know any of you. I don’t owe you anything.” She gestured out through the back flap. “If whoever’s out there is willing to make a deal, I’ll take it.”
I shook my head in disgust. “They hurt us. They don’t know us, and they hurt us. We aren’t going to be able to reason with them or trust any promises they make.” I turned to the white-robed man, a trained cleric of the citadel. “Oren? What’s our plan?”
He turned to me slowly, his pinpoints of light narrowed with grim resignation. “We fight.”
11
Fight?” the woman shrilled. “We have no weapons, no training. How can we hope to win?”
“You have no training, you mean. Clerics are trained in several forms of combat,” Oren said firmly, and by the set of his weight, I believed him. I’d seen similar determinedness from the men in the Brigade back in Pointe, just before a foray into the Grimwood. Oren had seen some things in his time. Maybe he gave himself too little credit when he claimed he wouldn’t last a week on his own with the rest of the citadel on his heels.
“Arwin and I can fight,” I said, taking a step toward Oren.
“We can?”
I faced Arwin. “Yes. It’s the only way for us to win this.”
She took a deep breath, audible from several feet away, and then I heard the shuffle of her feet against the canvas siding that now acted as the floor. “Okay,” she said, steadying herself against the wooden slats at our side. “I need a weapon.”
Oren looked the two of us up and down. Then he reached into a concealed flap of his robes and pulled out two slender knives. “Here,” he said, handing one to each of us. “Those should suit you.”
“Where did you even keep these?” she asked, a hint of awe in her voice.
“Never go anywhere unprepared.” His eyes were trained out the open flap of the back of the cart again, then to the torn section. “Everyone, out through the side. We’re shielded from view now, but it won’t be long before they think to encircle us from behind. If we get trapped against this cart, we’re done for.”
“Out in the open, we’ll be sitting ducks,” Arwin argued.
“They can’t see in the dark.” Oren touched his temple, just left of his eye. “I can. Come on, follow me.”
He stepped past me and then paused before the woman with the attitude. “And who are you?”
“We have been traveling together since last night,” she said defensively. “How could you have forgotten—?”
“I am not asking because I don’t recognize you,” Oren said curtly. “I’m asking because when someone is coming at you from behind with an axe, I need to warn you with something other than ‘Hey, you, get out of the way.’ Understand?”
She looked abashed for a moment, stunned into silence, her features only just visible under Oren’s stare, and then she collected herself and replied quietly, “Morena. Morena Belva.”
“Morena it is.” He gave a nod of approval to her, then turned to me and Arwin. “Through the flap, now. Keep tight to the cart and move toward the front.”
I reached and grabbed the torn fabric, then ducked through its narrow slit opening into the open night. The stars were concealed behind a thin layer of clouds, and the lantern that had hung from the back of the cart now rested on its side on the ground, one glass panel smashed into pieces. The flickering light still licked at the air with a pitiful flame. Before rational thought could stop me, I reached over and picked it up.
Almost instantly, a pair of projectiles—sharpened rocks, maybe, but moving faster than an arrow loosed from a bow—scored the dirt where the lantern had been just a second ago. I almost dropped it out of shock, but then Oren grabbed me by the back of the shirt and pulled me away.
“That was a damn foolish thing to do,” he growled, his eyes glowing bright. They were…had they turned a pale shade of orange? “If we’d moved quietly enough, they might have assumed everyone inside was dead. Now they know at least one of us made it.”
“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 side 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.”
“Th
at 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.