The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

*

Vetch flinched and nearly fell over sideways from where he perched behind Lily’s saddle. His muscles acted of their own accord to keep him upright, causing him to gasp silently in pain. His injuries ached abominably. Had he been asleep? He could not tell one way or the other. Yet, night had fallen since he had last been aware, and they had somehow found themselves back on the main road of Bannerman’s Wood. The small trail that had led them away from Hayleigh’s secluded cottage was an afterthought, left behind like a fever dream. Bright moon and starlight lit their way, silvering the leaves overhead and dusting the pathway before them. Night insects whirred and chirped. It was tempting to simply close his eyes and drowse again, but Vetch decided he best not.

Lily’s panthegrunn padded easily along the road, carrying the two of them and her laden saddlebags without any discernable effort. It was the first time Vetch had ridden on Fae. Her gait was so different from that of a horse. He could feel her casual strength. What a terrifying animal. He had the vague recollection of watching her effortlessly throw Hayleigh off her feet with but a toss of her great head, all to protect Lily. Yet, with Lily, this strange, dangerous beast was as benign as a kitten. Vetch noted, too, her unusual stamina, and briefly he wondered at how she carried the both of them long into the night without a hint of the fatigue a horse would have shown. How much more effective could a garrison be, outfitted entirely with charge-beast mounts instead of horses? He discarded the disturbing prospect almost as quickly as he thought of it; charge-beasts rarely tolerated the company of anyone save their companion mages. Fae was docile with a few individuals that Lily looked liked, but there was a reason Lily also chose to care for and feed the animal herself, despite the availability of capable stable hands in Moonfane Forge.

Vetch’s wandering mind alerted him to how tired he was and how late the night had grown. He touched Lily’s shoulder. “Lily. It is night. We need to stop and make a camp.”

She didn’t startle as he had expected her to. Instead, she quickly ran the back of her hand over her eyes. Had she been weeping in silence? He saw her shoulders rise and fall, as if she took a breath to steady her voice, before she said, “You’re right. Let’s ... let’s find a place to camp.”

That place was a sheltered bower directly off the road, where the trees might disguise a campfire should more of The Lady’s sellswords appear. Vetch chose the spot without mentioning to Lily that reasoning. There, he kindled a small fire and cooked the game birds they had taken from the malignant mage, while Lily saw to Fae. They worked as if there were a fence between the two of them, saying little save what was necessary, and Vetch knew that they both quietly bore the tiredness and confusion of the day’s events. It was only after they had eaten—and with the taste of the unpleasant, gamey meat still on his tongue—that he thought to speak, to try and detangle some of what they both had gone through, and what they might do next.

“We’re heading east,” he noted, attaching no presumptions to the statement.

Across the pitiful fire, Lily hugged her knees to her chest and sat looking into the flames. She looked as if she had gone through much since he had last seen her. She was dirty and had faint scratches on her lithe arms. Her hair hung lank and dull where it had come out of its tail. Her eyes, in which he was used to seeing such buoyancy and light, were destitute. Even her dress was ripped. She had clearly been wearing the same one for days. He’d not seen this dress before. Borrowed, he realized, because all of her possessions would have been lost when her home burned. Had she even brought extra clothing? Did she know how important that was when expecting to travel for days on end?

Despite all of these things, she was still so beautiful to him, the most beautiful sight he could think of. To look upon her, and know that she lived, rejuvenated him, made his heart light. But, at the same time, to see her typically lively bearing so marred by what the attack on their town had taken from her put his thoughts in a dark place. He desired nothing more than to take revenge on the villains responsible. So, when Lily nodded to his words, he found himself nodding along before she even voiced her answer.

“Yes,” she murmured. She took a breath. Then another, deeper one. “I must find Marigold and be at her side. I had hoped to catch up with you and the other soldiers ...”

Her words trailed away as Vetch made a short nod of his head. Before finding Lily alive, he had been resigned to abandoning his mission and going home. Even now, he still considered advising they do that. But that would be wise cowardice, and the notion fluttered away at the resoluteness in her voice, compelling him to reorder his thinking.

“There’s not much we can do, you understand,” he cautioned. Already, he saw that if she meant to go on, that he would follow. He would follow her without question. Still, he could not do so without cautioning her. “We’ll be seeking merciless people, Lily, just the two of us, with little recourse to defy them should we succeed in locating them at all.”

She nodded her head faintly and hugged her knees in closer. She had no argument against that and neither did he.

“What will happen to that woman?” Vetch asked into the shared silence. The question had come to him and escaped his lips before he could decide whether or not it was a fair moment to ask it. Lily’s eyes met his and her brow knit in confusion. When he clarified “Hayleigh”, he saw how her posture stiffened. He felt a pinch of guilt for his ill-advised curiosity. If she chose not to answer, he wouldn’t have blamed her.

“The weather is mild. I don’t think she’ll take too much ill from being outside a few nights.” Lily’s voice settled into the cadence of a student of magic, speaking from a direction of expertise divested of emotion. “She used her magic for horrible things, but without her charge-beast, I don’t think she’ll be a threat to anyone anymore. She hadn’t the training to summon that strength herself. Already, I can no longer sense the net of magic over these woods that had been here before.” Vetch knew nothing about this ‘net of magic’ Lily spoke of, but he stayed silent and listened on. “She will wake from Slumber eventually, thirsty and hungry and alone, and go on with her life.”

The way she asserted this last was as if she finished the chapter of a book and closed it, leaving Vetch with the impression that it would be spoken of no more.

“Okay,” he said. “Then ... then we go on.” To this, Lily nodded adamantly. Vetch smiled. Yes, she was right. It was not in his hands to give up on Marigold and return home, nor to let the raiders escape his blade. In this endeavor, the two of them represented Moonfane Forge’s scant hope that the attack would not be its final breath. “Okay,” he reiterated. “Then, if we’re to see this through, we need to sleep now and wake early. We are on the right trail. We—that is to say, my soldiers and I—had been catching up to them, but you and I have lost some days to them now. The Lady who took Marigold flees to a black-stoned castle surrounded by wheat fields. We had found a coat of arms that confirmed that description. Still hadn’t ferreted out who The Lady is, but to the south and east of here is a town called Pasanhal. It seems a likely region for this black castle to be located. We need to find our way out of these woods and make our way to that town. From there ...”

The light of the flickering flames from their campfire caught and highlighted the quiet tears running down Lily’s cheeks. Vetch saw then how she drew herself even smaller and clenched her jaw tightly with her eyes cast down at the fire, as though she heard him not at all. But the moment his voice trailed away, she looked up into his eyes and he saw how she’d been holding everything in. When she saw the matching look of dismay on his face, she burst into sobs. Instantly, he went to her side and drew her into his arms.

“Oh, Vetch, my family are all dead,” she keened into his chest, her voice breaking and her breaths coming in plaintive gasps. Vetch held her quaking shoulders and soothed her hair with his cheek as the tide of her mourning spilled over. In that moment, he felt more powerless than he ever had in his life.

“I know, I know, shh, shh, shh ...” he whispered helplessly. There was nothing he could do. He knew that. No way to bring them back for her and no way to ease her pain now. He could only hold her and let her cry. “I am so, so very sorry, Lily.” He squeezed her and she huddled herself tighter to him. The warmth of her lithe body warded off the chill of the night, but not the chill clenching his heart.

For a long time, they stayed like this, until her sobs softened and her breathing became even once again. And Vetch rubbed her arms and kissed the top of her head, and then her temple. He closed his eyes and calmed his own breathing down, matching it to hers as one paltry comfort he could offer.

Even as he comforted her, he wondered at how could he have been so callous. Her family was no more and she sought only to save the one remaining person who was like family to her. She didn’t deny her pain, nor hide from how it drove her on. Unlike himself, who attempted still to banish the images of his fellow soldiers’s dulled eyes from his thoughts, so he would not have to confront their deaths under his command. That brought to mind the encounters he’d had with the raiders who had killed them, and how he had twice been bested by them. What would it take for him to protect Lily from those kinds of people, should they ever meet? Must he harden his heart and become as cold and merciless of a slayer as his enemies in order to stand a chance against them? Did he try to forget his dead companions because he feared such anguish would overwhelm him, or because he suspected that the only way he would survive a third encounter with the raiders and their commander was if he learned to disdain all emotion?

Even as Lily let her emotions course freely, and found therein the strength to move forward, would Vetch have to make himself something appalling in order to keep her safe? As he viewed things at present, he was not capable of protecting her. But if he did what he must to become capable, what would that make him into? More alarming, how would she see him then?

A soft brush of her fingers on his arm alerted him to the fact that he’d been unknowingly tightening his embrace of her to the point of discomfort, as if that might provide protection from all the hurts that assailed her. He relaxed the grip of his arms. Rather than move away, she lay down while maintaining their closeness. Vetch kept his arms around her and followed, arranging himself on his side behind her, as she pressed her back against him and lay her head on her pillowed blankets. She sniffled once, but then closed her eyes and was silent.

He wanted so badly to whisper comforting words to her, to promise her that together they would succeed, that they would set things right. But he could not bring himself to do it. He had been wrong so very many times already.

In minutes, Lily’s breathing fell into the steady rhythm of sleep, and the tension she’d held in the corners of her eyes, and the set of her mouth, released. Vetch lay awake and held her, staring for a long time into the darkness and everything therein that soon they must face, until he, too, was finally able to drift and dream.