The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

Morning found them going on foot along the forest road, with Lily’s panthegrunn plodding unconcernedly beside them. They had woken to a cool and clear morning, with a deep blue sky showing in patches through the tree canopy. Throughout their hastily prepared breakfast and the breaking of camp, they had restricted their conversation to the topics directly before them, things such as their destination, and how soon they might be able to quit the forest. The anguish of the friends and family lost, and the confusion of the preceding events that had led to he and Lily reuniting, had receded temporarily with their avoidance, like the ache of a wound that neither of them had the desire to prod at again just yet. Vetch was thankful for this—at least, in part. The days he had spent in Hayleigh’s forest cottage were a muddled haze of emotions that now baffled him. Lily, he knew, would have a clearer picture of what had happened back there, but his desire to find clarity did not yet outweigh his reluctance to revisit the topic. It was not hard for him to read the same in Lily. After her outpouring of the night before, she appeared to be intentionally keeping her emotions small, to the point of it showing even in how she carried herself. It was in the set of her shoulders, and the way she held her chin up and kept her eyes forward on the road. He could understand it, and yet was saddened by it, that their joyous reunion had to be threaded through with so many thorns of loss and heartache, so that they must both dance cautiously with their words, lest they prick one another with reminders of fresh traumas.

So, Lily spoke not of her lost family, and Vetch not of his lost companions, except to bring Lily up to speed on the few precious clues he and his fellow soldiers had discovered. Lily nodded solemnly to his supposition that the livestock raid was only a ploy meant to lead to Marigold dispelling the town’s Barrier, so that Moonfane Forge might be attacked and she herself stolen away. He told her of the escaped thief who had witnessed The Lady taking Marigold, and of how the raiders had taken great pains to cover the tracks of their escape through the woods. The pride he once would have felt at how he and his soldiers had overcome those efforts was absent. He described all he knew only to share with Lily all information that might help them.

When he told her of the carriage with the bed and bits of rope in it, where Marigold had clearly been held bound, the set of Lily’s jaw became tight. Vetch immediately regretted giving her cause to imagine the abuse her beloved mentor may have already suffered at the hands of her abductors. He had sought only to reassure her that Marigold still lived—for only a living person with fight left in them needed to be bound—but too late he realized that he did so with the blunt manner of a soldier.

“I’m sorry,” he said sheepishly.

Lily gave a short shake of her head and Vetch feared he had injured her. Something in her eyes changed then; her gaze became thoughtful and tempered. Her next words surprised him.

“She could make Barriers move, Vetch.” She looked at him and again shook her head. “I’d never heard of anything like that before. I’m uncertain if even Marigold could do such a thing.” There was a note of frustration in her voice, as though this were a puzzle she could not solve. And there was something else there, not in her voice, but in the way her eyes briefly flicked to the ground: fear. She feared this strange mage as much as Vetch feared the fighters she commanded.

“You are saying this Lady can use Barrier magic in a way even Marigold cannot? Is she more powerful than Marigold?”

Lily knit her brow, gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. What I could sense of her spells, I didn’t understand. If I ...” she paused, thought for a moment, started again. “If I were to cast Barrier spells the way this woman did, they would be careless. And dangerous. But from this Lady, there was, I felt ... what’s the word? Expertise? It was like watching tumblers at a fair, standing three or four tall on one another’s shoulders. As you watch, you know that what they’re doing is difficult and hazardous, and that you’d be a fool to try it yourself. Yet, they do it with seeming ease.”

She turned a helpless expression on Vetch and finished with a lame shrug.

It left him with even more questions and nothing to add. He tried anyway. “From the time I was small, I’d always heard that Marigold was the most accomplished Barrier-Caster in the kingdom, if not the most skilled living mage outright.”

Lily was quiet. Fae grunted and nosed at her hand. Automatically, Lily went into one of her saddlebags for some food for the panthegrunn. She came up with only a paltry amount of rain-spoiled fodder that Fae turned her nose up at.

With a sigh, Lily dropped the fodder and brushed her hands off on her skirt. “She’ll force us to stop soon, whenever she decides she’s found a place to browse around for a meal.”

“That’s as well,” Vetch decided. “We know where to seek The Lady now. We gain little by rushing headlong into danger at this point. We’ll need rest and sustenance ourselves, and to formulate some kind of a plan.”

He left unsaid that with every wasted hour, more was the chance for Marigold to be ill-treated by her captors, or worse. Not knowing why Marigold had been taken ate at him. Despite having it drilled into his head from his first days in the garrison how valuable a target a mage such as she represented, there was still a chance the raiders had no idea who they held. Sellswords tended not to ask too many questions, and they could be hired by anyone. Even an unscrupulous mage could ... no. Not just anyone could hire a force like that, not that many fighters, not that strong of a mage. Whomever set this in motion, if it were not The Lady herself, must have considerable resources at their command.

All of that aside, it took only one drunken sellsword to lose his temper and kill Marigold, or for a deal to fall through and the old woman be left to rot in a cell in some fortification somewhere. It could already have happened and they’d never know. The more Vetch considered the possibilities, the more tangled up the situation appeared.

Lily’s voice broke through his thoughts. “What is that smell?” she asked.

She had paused in the road. Beside her, Fae stood tensed, her large nostrils working in agitation. A shift in the wind brought the smell strongly to Vetch. His heart sank at its familiarity. At the same time, he caught movement out of the corner of his eye, something large and dark in the trees. Lily noticed it as well and softly gasped. She placed her hand on Fae’s shoulder, as if to hold her back, or take comfort from her, or both.

Silently, Vetch held out his hand. Lily rested her long fingers in his palm and he crept forward, leading the way off the road and keeping his other hand on his sword grip. Fae followed them less quietly. With each cautious step forward, the smell grew stronger, a stench that made Vetch wrinkle his nose and gird his stomach. Fae grunted, snapping a stout sapling in two as she shouldered through it. The panthegrunn rendered their attempt at stealth moot. Still, Vetch controlled his breathing and kept his eyes peeled for whatever it was that had caught his attention with its movement.

They came into a small clearing just out of sight of the road. A quick scan of the area showed Vetch that there had once been a small camp here, but he saw neither man nor beast present now. He still didn’t like the feel of the place. Something was off. Lily gave his his hand a squeeze. He squeezed back and together they stepped out into the open. His gaze was so fixed on their surroundings, searching for danger, that he didn’t notice the dark lump partially hidden in the grass until he kicked it with his boot. Lily let out a little gasp as a swarm of black flies erupted into the air before them. They buzzed in a roiling cloud above the dead body lying face down in the dirt that they had covered. As one Vetch and Lily recoiled back, frozen momentarily by the horrendousness of the sight. The multitudinous flies whipped and weaved around the body, before settling back on it.

Taking a step forward, Vetch wedged the toe of his boot under the body to nudge it face up. Lily made a small sound of protest, but didn’t try to stop him. The cloud of flies erupted again as he flipped the body over. The smell of decay was released anew, a stench so thick it was like a physical wall assailed them. Vetch covered his nose and mouth and fought not to retch. Lily, too, clapped her hands over her mouth in horror and voiced a whimper of dismay at what was revealed. The dead man’s face was a writhing mask of maggots. They displanted his eyes, wriggled from nostrils and mouth, and writhed around the many ragged stab wounds in his stomach.

Even with the man’s face entirely obscured by the carrion-feeders, Vetch recognized him: Slouk.

“Do you know him?” he heard Lily ask. She paused and swallowed and he knew she tried not to gag. “Part of the garrison?”

“No,” Vetch said. He chose to say no more, and Lily did not press him. So, this was where the horse thief’s betrayal and duplicity had led him. A short road in life, with a harsh end. If this is what the raiders had done to him, Vetch thought, then what would they have done to his captive sister? If she had been real and not just another of the thief’s fabrications.

He stared at what remained of the young man, trying not to equate this vision with how his fellow soldiers would also appear now, elsewhere in these woods. Lily touched his shoulder. Her voice was a whisper of disbelief.

“Vetch. Look.”

He turned to her and then followed her gaze to the tall grass surrounding Slouk. A glint of yellow metal captured his gaze and held it. A coin. A thick gold coin, nearly obscured in the tall grass. Once his eyes had found that first one, then he could perceive all its companions, too. There were gold coins scattered everywhere, a small ransom’s worth, all around Slouk’s body.

Lily and he looked at one another. Then, without preamble, Vetch stooped and began picking them up, one by one. They clinked heavy in his palm. He ignored the flecks of old dried blood that marred so many of them, even as he felt Lily’s eyes on him and wondered how she judged him for this cold action. For a brief moment, he considered dropping the coins and expressing shame, but he could summon none. It was survival, plain and simple. They didn’t expect to stay in the wilderness forever; soon they would depart the forest and make for the town they sought—Pasanhal. And when they got there, they would need coin. Despite that, Vetch’s cheeks burned. He felt as though he thieved, though he could not say who he thieved from.

Without a word, Lily bent and began to help him, and Vetch breathed easier for the understanding that passed between them. Now was not the time for questioning this strange windfall. Between the two of them, they soon had gathered up all the coins they could see. As Vetch straightened and cast about for any they may have missed, movement out of the corner of his eye recalled him to the reason they had chosen to investigate off the road in the first place. He was alerted to a presence at the edge of the clearing. Lily and Fae became aware of it at the same moment.

Vetch had but a second to drop his coins and re-draw his blade. He put himself in front of Lily just as the horse came crashing through the undergrowth into the open. Lily shrieked as it charged directly for them, hooves thundering up clods of dirt in its wake. Vetch’s body readied itself for battle automatically, even as his thoughts begged ‘please, no more.’ Would they ever be free of these raiders who sought to harry and kill them? He raised his blade.

Then, in another half second, he saw that the horse that bore down on them carried no rider at all, and it ran at them, not as part of an attack, but out of enthusiasm. Vetch dropped his blade in order to catch up the beast’s reins. It made the task easy for him by sliding to a halt before him, tossing its head, and nickering a greeting. Vetch was not surprised to recognize it as the horse Slouk had ridden from Moonfane Forge. Little wonder it came to them so eagerly; the animal would have been days removed from the fodder it was accustomed to, left alone for all this time since its rider’s death, burdened and chafed still by saddle and bridle. A horse used to the company of humans, having lived in Moonfane Forge’s comfortable stables, saw friendly faces now and asked them for their help.

“Poor thing,” Vetch breathed. He took the horse’s muzzle in his hands and stroked its nose. The beast calmed under the touch.

“Damn, if he didn’t give me a fright,” said Lily at his shoulder. “Where did he come from?” To this, Vetch tipped his head to Slouk’s corpse.

“That was the man who witnessed them taking Marigold. We’d brought him along as someone who could recognize The Lady, but he betrayed us. Took off with our best supplies. Which means ...” Vetch opened a saddlebag, peered inside. “Ha! Our food and water. And now, along with this coin ...” He smiled to Lily and chuckled. “We’re a sight much better off than we were yesterday.” Lily favored him with one of her illuminating smiles. He pulled from the saddlebag one of the garrison’s basic travel bowls and filled it from a full waterskin. This he held for the horse, who drank greedily.

His optimism was tempered when Lily asked, “And the people who killed this man? ...”

“The same who tried to kill me,” he confirmed solemnly. “The same who took your teacher. They would be The Lady’s guards.” He saw in Lily’s face the grave understanding that blossomed. Vetch had seen the ruthlessness these people were capable of. He did not desire to ever subject Lily to it. Yet, these were the people they chased after, the people they must confront. As he met her eyes, he saw her square her shoulders and take a measured breath.

“We need to get moving, then.” She spoke this with a mix of fear and determination in her voice.

Vetch gave a short nod of his head. “Let me check the horse over and see that he’s fit to come with us, then we’ll be on our way.”

No sooner had he spoken than the horse snorted and backed away from him, its nostrils flaring. At the same time, Fae raised her head from her oblivious grazing to stare off into the trees. The sound of voices reached their ears.

“Ugh. Smell that? Smells like Murzagis’s work, don’t it? This looks like the place up here.”

It was two stout men. They arrived in the clearing from the same direction Lily and Vetch had. When they saw they were not alone, they stopped in their tracks and their postures became alert.

“Who’re you?” the taller of the two asked, jutting his chin out and putting authority in his voice, as though he owned this pocket of forest in which they all stood. He was a large man, with a belly rounded like an ale cask, bald-headed and boasting a messy black beard. Both he and his companion were dressed in townsman’s clothes. So, not the armor-clad sellswords Vetch feared to run across again. Travelers? Vetch marked the sword on the smaller man’s belt. It was a standard-issue blade. One from Moonfane Forge’s armory. Just how did he come to have that, Vetch wondered.

The one with the sword—a slighter man with an equally unkempt beard and receding hair—licked his lips and nudged his friend’s arm, before indicating with his head the coins Lily still held in her hands.

“Those don’t belong to you, do they, girly?”

Vetch spoke in her stead. “What makes you say that?” As he spoke, he bent smoothly and picked up his own blade from where he’d dropped it in the tall grass, keeping his eyes on the two men the entire time. Now, they knew he wasn’t unarmed. He gave his blade a deft flip in his hand, a motion to show them he knew how to wield it.

“Don’t be stupid,” said the larger man, and drew a belt knife. “Give us those coins and everybody goes their separate ways from here. They were dropped by our people. We came back for ‘em. They’re ours.” He tried to put a note of reason in his tone, but it sounded a sour bargain to Vetch’s ears.

Fae chose that moment to grunt and scrape the earth with a hoof. The smaller of the two drew his sword to back up his friend, but he held it nervously, his eyes darting between the hulking panthegrunn and Vetch.

“You don’t want to do this,” Vetch said, and hoped that they would take his word for it. He thought little for how amateurishly either of these men held their blades, but even as he took his stance, he fought not to grit his teeth against the pain his wounds caused him. If it did come to a fight, he’d not be able to hide his injuries for long. Weakened as he was, even a couple of inexperienced brawlers could quickly overwhelm him. All he could do was bluff.

“For that much gold? Yeah. We do.” The bigger man smirked as he moved in with shuffling steps, his knife held out before him.

Vetch’s focus was on the two assailants. He would try to kill the bigger man first, the bolder of the two. The shorter one had not moved yet. The bigger man mumbled under his breath, getting his courage up. In a moment he would charge.

In calculating his chances of getting himself and Lily out of this alive, Vetch did not notice how Lily had gone to her panthegrunn to calm her, nor how she closed her eyes and lifted her hand. He did see, however, the way the air between he and the knife-wielding man began to shimmer with a wavery apparition like golden glass.

As soon as the smaller man saw this, he hopped forward and grabbed his companion’s sleeve, desperately trying to pull him back while shouting, “Wait wait wait wait! Stop! Stop! She’s like her! Stop!” Uncertainty flashed across the bigger man’s visage. He scowled at his friend, who shook his head frantically at him. “No,” he whispered. “She’s like her.” There was great fear in those words.

There was a moment during which the larger man thought about it. Then, reluctantly, he held up his hands in a signal of peace. “Okay. Enough, then.” He directed his words to Lily. “You don’t have to do that. See?” He sheathed his knife. The other man had simply dropped his sword.

The beginnings of the Barrier that Lily had brought into being faded. She opened her eyes and caught up a short breath. She still kept her hand raised, holding them at bay with the threat of magic. Vetch knew immediately that these men had seen Barriers cast before, in ways that made them fear them.

“Like who?” Vetch demanded. The two men snapped their eyes from Lily back to him, as if they saw him for the first time. “Who is she like?” He chanced an easy guess. “The Lady? The one with the raven hair?”

The two men exchanged a glance. Then the larger of the two scratched at his beard and sneered. “The noblewoman. Yeah. And fuck her. Fuck her and the old hag, too.”

“The old hag?”

“The crone. The bitch trussed up in the carriage I was given to drive.”

“Don’t you dare speak of her that way!” Lily spat. “But ... she lives?”

The big man scoffed. How quickly he’d regained his arrogance. “Lives, complains, pisses herself. Finds ways to cast little spells to hold us up, or make the carriage horses run into an invisible wall. Fell out of the seat and nearly broke my damned neck one of those times.” He spat in the dirt. Then, in a voice dripping with spiteful amusement, chuckled, “Oh, The Lady’s not going to be happy when she learns someone’s still followin’ her.”

Lily was breathing harder, her face flushed at hearing how Marigold struggled against her captors. Vetch shot her a glance and indicated calm with his hand. “Where are they bound for?” he asked the two men. “Where is The Lady taking the old woman? How many swordsmen surround her?”

“Swordsmen? Murzagis’s men, you mean? You talkin’ about those bloodthirsty bastards?” He licked his lips and spoke conversationally. “You know, those swordsmen are gettin’ paid a whole hell of a lot better than me or my friend here ever did. Well enough to not even mind leaving a bunch of gold coins behind in the forest and laughing about it amongst themselves later. You’re asking me how many of them? Hm ... how many? ...” He left the question hanging, eyes flicking to the coins at Vetch’s feet. So, that was his game now, a bribe.

“No,” Vetch said. “You’re just going to tell us.”

So, another piece of the puzzle. Vetch recalled something Slouk had mentioned, about how there were trained soldiers and petty criminals both in The Lady’s employ. The soldiers were the ones who had laid waste to Moonfane Forge and killed its people. But then there were men like this, like Slouk, who looked for any jobs they could hire on to. These types would have neither the discipline nor the discretion of professional sellswords. And, apparently, The Lady did not treat them well. Could he and Lily turn this tidbit of information to their advantage? If they managed to catch up to the carriages, were there some hirelings who might be convinced to leave their posts and allow them to spirit Marigold away? His mind worked furiously.

“One,” said Lily abruptly, and held up one of the gold coins. “One of these for what you know.”

“One?” The large man shook his head. “Spirits damn you, woman.”

“It’s one coin or two panthegrunn horns. Take your pick. Where have they taken Marigold and how many people are guarding her?”

The man appeared to be weighing his options. Behind him, his friend wrung his hands nervously, eyes fixed on the coin Lily held. It wasn’t nearly the offer they wanted, but they feared her magic. Finally, the big man relented. “Not as many as there were. Just enough to see the mage back to her keep. She let a lot of ‘em go their own ways after she had the old woman.”

“And where is her keep?” Vetch prompted.

The man considered for a moment, chewing the inside of his cheek. He shook his head. “Nobody talked about that. It was just do your job and keep your mouth shut or else one of her sellswords cracks your skull. Get it?” He chuckled darkly. At a look from Lily, he added, “Look, we slipped away once we reached Pasanhal town. We’d had enough. But people there seemed to know who The Lady was, or at least not to piss her off. So, near there’d be my guess. Supposed to be some old fortress or something.”

Vetch shared a look with Lily. It was scarcely more than they already knew. Her face appeared troubled, but she nodded.

The man scoffed. “Then, if that’ll be all, m’lord and m’lady, I’ll take my gold and we’ll be on our merry way.” He sketched a mocking bow and then waited with his open hand out for his bribe.

The smaller of the two piped up suddenly. “And for me? Please, my lady, give us one apiece. One for me, too? I beg you.”

Vetch sheathed his sword, gathered up the coins he had dropped, and stowed them in the horse’s saddlebag. Loathe as he was to press the poor beast further before he could see more thoroughly to its care, they needed to be away. He mounted up and the horse bore him well. Lily, meanwhile, produced a second coin and tossed them both onto the ground before the larger man’s boots. But before either of the two could swoop in to collect their prize, she waved her hand in a circular motion and a small dome-like Barrier formed over the coins. No matter how the men tried, they could not get their fingers through it to get at the gold.

“You can have them when that wears off at nightfall,” Lily informed them against their curses.

She mounted up on Fae and started her moving back through the trees to the road. Vetch clicked his tongue and followed on his horse. When they emerged once more on the track, he looked back over his shoulder and caught a glimpse through the trees of the two men sitting on the ground in the clearing, staring at the little Barrier like it was a campfire. He smiled. With one small Casting, Lily had chained the two brutes to that clearing for the remainder of the day. Whatever experience had driven them from The Lady’s service had also been enough to put them off from testing another mage like Lily. They’d take the guaranteed coin, rather than push their luck by following.

With that danger averted, Vetch’s mind turned again to how they could make use of what they had learned from the encounter. So, some of sellswords had been released from their service? He wondered at the reason for that but, frankly, it didn’t matter. If it turned out to be true, it could only be a good thing. And, if he could also further extrapolate that more of The Lady’s people might be fed up with their unsavory work and receptive to abandoning her—or even turning against her—a confrontation with them just might be survivable. If a confrontation it had to come to.

Their best options hinged on catching up with The Lady and her raiders on the road. An injured soldier and an apprentice mage alone could not storm a castle keep. It was time to discuss with Lily what they would do.

“Once we find our way out of the woods—”

“Vetch, be quiet for a moment and listen to me,” Lily interrupted him. “I have to say all this quickly.” Despite her words, she took a moment to compose herself. Watching her riding alongside him on her panthegrunn, Vetch could see how the encounter had shaken her. But more than that, the resolute way she looked at him made him pay close attention. Clearly, he was not the only one who had been silently chewing over the sparse information they had gleaned. But her next words showed him that what she had taken from the encounter was decidedly different. “I didn’t need to, but I imbued that Barrier with a Condition of fading daylight, just as I told them. It’s something I don’t have much practice in, so even as small as the Barrier was, I may Slumber the rest of the day away. I can already feel it falling upon me.

“Listen, Vetch, if I’m to help you ... if we are to help each other, and together help Marigold, I am going to need to be confident in any Castings I must perform. So, you should know what you’ll be facing when they cause me to Slumber.” Again, she paused, and color rose on her cheeks. “I trust you, Vetch. I’ve always trusted you, and I know that you’ll look out for me. I will need you to act as my mage’s attendant in this. When a mage ... when I Slumber, there will be no way to wake me until the state wears off.” Vetch nodded his awareness of this much. Lily spoke quickly through it, as if not to lose her nerve. “But there’s more to it than simply watching over a Slumbering mage. We still must eat and drink. I will need water given to me regularly, and for longer Slumbers something sustaining, like a good broth. And ... and the body does not ... pause in its ... it’s other functions. Um ...” She swallowed, restarted. “With this Casting, hopefully I will be out no longer than a few hours, but, you understand—”

“I understand,” Vetch confirmed. Her cheeks were fully reddened now. Vetch felt more flattered that she would put this trust in him than from anything else she could have said to him in that moment.

At the same time, it cast in a new light his earlier reservations about who he would have to become, as a man and as a soldier, were he to succeed in protecting her—as he had not succeeded in protecting his fellow soldiers. It seemed she asked for his utmost sensitivity, while he had been counseling himself toward coldness.

“Mages can do powerful things,” Lily went on, sailing now in more comfortable waters. “And, while I’m not particularly powerful, I can add what I can do to your swordsmanship, and hopefully that will be enough. But after any magic I use, I will be helpless. I will be relying on you entirely. I will need you.”

From her lower riding position on Fae, she looked up at him through her long lashes, a request there in her eyes, a vulnerability she was sharing and entrusting him with. He was caught speechless by her beauty then. She had begun her speech with such assertion and urgency, but her words had ended small and unsure, as if she feared he would reject this, or even part of it. He couldn’t even imagine doing such a thing.

“You have me.” He spoke without hesitation, and was pleased beyond measure to see the anxiousness in her gaze evaporate. She smiled, and he smiled back.

“Then ...” she reined Fae in to a halt and slid from the saddle, swaying slightly on her feet when they touched the ground. Vetch halted his horse, a querying look on his face. “Hand me up in front of you,” she said, offering her hand. “I really don’t want to Slumber for hours slumped over Fae again. I still have a little crick in my neck from the first time.”

Vetch chuckled. “We can’t have that. Not after the way you saved our bacon back there.” He gave her his hand. He still had to grit his teeth against the pain of his fresh wounds as he pulled her up to sit before him in the saddle.

“Oh. You had to go and mention bacon. I wish I had the time to eat something now.” She settled herself in front of him and leaned into him, back against his chest. He gripped the reins around her.

“I’ll prepare something for us when you wake. A proper meal, or at least the closest I can muster using these supplies. Fae will follow us?” he asked.

Lily didn’t answer. Vetch leaned to one side to peer at her face. Her eyes were closed. She Slumbered already. He clicked his tongue and started the horse up the path again. Fae grunted and kept her own pace beside them.