The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

Two walls of solid timber were still not enough to completely muffle the sound of one of the soldiers over in the women’s side of the barracks being sick. Vetch didn’t envy her, nor any of the other soldiers who’d been afflicted with whatever stomach ailment had swept through their ranks. It was a reality of the soldier’s life living in a barracks, where men and women slept all in close quarters in stacked bunks. Whatever the ailment had been, it had thankfully already done most of its damage and passed on as quickly as it had come, leaving only a few stragglers still puking up the last of it. All the rest of them slept on through whatever noise. Soldiers became used to doing such—until at least such a time as they got married or rose up in the ranks enough to move out of the barracks and into their own dwelling. So, it wasn’t any unpleasant noise that was keeping Vetch wide awake, despite the long day of doubled duty that would normally have seen him asleep the moment he hit his bunk.

No, it was that his mind was afire with thoughts of Lily. It had been more than a pleasant surprise to see her awake from Caster’s Slumber at least a day early and riding her panthegrunn back to town with her hair streaming wildly out behind her, laughing in her exhilaration and daring Fae to go faster. Vetch hadn’t been prepared for how much it would quicken his heartbeat to see her so unexpectedly—her beauty and presence stunned him anew every time they encountered one another. Since they had parted in the stables that morning, he had replayed in his mind every word she’d said, every little smile, even the way she had unconsciously tried to brush a few stray strands of her hair back from her face, even though none had escaped, as she sometimes did when she was tongue-tied.

Vetch held the entire chance meeting in his mind, along with how they had so easily planned a day together. What did it all mean? It didn’t feel like when they were children and would meet up in town and shirk the errands their parents had sent them on in favor of climbing trees, or when they would gather their friends together for games of hide-and-seek in the yak herds. This was different, like something all their own. There was a significance to it. Something had changed between that time and now, over the last few years while Lily was beginning to learn magic and Vetch had gone for a soldier. Vetch felt completely swept up in it, so that every infrequent encounter with her, no matter how short, or what they talked about, mattered more to him than anything else in his day. And now they were making plans like this, and it felt like something was growing between them that they were taking all for themselves.

Vetch wasn’t even sure of what this one day of walking the markets together would mean, or was supposed to be, or where it would lead to. Perhaps nothing and nowhere. Perhaps he was putting too much thought into it. One thing he was sure of, though, is that tomorrow’s duties would be some of the longest and most tedious he’d ever endure, while waiting for the day after, when he could see Lily, and hopefully find out. He also knew he’d be much better off going into tomorrow with a full night’s sleep under his belt, but that knowledge was only a single bubble popping on the surface of the thoughts and hopes and anticipations that had been simmering in him all day, and still showed no signs of abating.

It must be past midnight, he thought to himself, and his eyes weren’t even closed. At least the sound of retching the next room over had finally stopped.

The sharp peal of a distant alarm bell struck Vetch like lightning. He sat bolt upright in his upper bunk. It was one of the outlying farm bells, a distant one out on the south road. He threw his blanket off and vaulted out of bed to the floor. Around him, the other soldiers were waking to it as well, and were rousing themselves with oaths and questions on their tongues. The barracks came alive with activity, soldiers all going through the same precise dance motions—lighting lanterns, grabbing up their uniforms, dressing in haste. Vetch was pulling on his boots when a second bell’s alarm joined the first, this time ringing from the east and significantly closer. The warning bells were loud and carried far, meant to wake soldiers and townsfolk alike to any threats or attacks outside the Barrier. Hearing one was enough to put even veterans of Moonfane Forge’s garrison on edge. Vetch had never before heard two ringing at once. A third began clanging to the west before he had even finished belting on his sword, and so Vetch was not surprised after that when the town’s gate bells all began ringing nearly at the same time, until the chilling sounds seemed to come from all directions and distances.

“What in all the hells?” complained one voice.

“Is it a drill?” queried another hopefully.

Vetch knew it wasn’t a drill. A soldier could tell. If it were, there would be grumbling and jesting and foot-dragging. But there was none of that. When he looked around him at his fellow soldiers, he saw in their eyes nervousness, fear, resignation. This was no drill, and they all knew it. This was serious.

His eyes landed on Wenzl across the room. The young recruit was dressed and armed, but frozen and looking to him for guidance. Vetch pointed to the door of the armory.

“Bring a bow and arrows!” he bellowed across the room to the boy, making sure he said it loud enough that other soldiers who needed to be were reminded as well. Wenzl made a sharp nod and dashed for the room. Vetch grabbed up his own bow and quiver of arrows from beside his clothes chest and strode outside.

Having been awake already when the alarms began, he was one of the first prepared and out the door. The shouts of guardsmen and townsfolk became an undercurrent to the cacophonous blanket of multitudinous bells. Beneath those nearer sounds, Vetch’s ears discerned the thundering of horse’s hooves and the panicked lowing of livestock in their paddocks outside the Barrier. It made real the implication of the alarms; raiders or rustlers outside the town. Possibly a lot of them. There might be fighting. The Barrier would ensure that no raiders could enter the town proper at night, but it couldn’t protect the farms and the people and livestock outside its span. That was a job for which the tools were not magic, but sharp steel.

The rest of the soldiers were streaming out of the barracks around Vetch, looking like grim wraiths in their black and silver uniforms, breath steaming in the frigid night air. Still more of their ranks were arriving on the scene from their own houses around town. Captain Tarese appeared and shoved her way through the throng without breaking stride.

“Form up!” she yelled, and the soldiers scrambled to close in behind her in two sharp queues. “Swords and bows! South Gate! Follow me!”

The captain led the way to the wide main street and then along it to the the town’s South Gate. Vetch found himself formed up beside Neschi. He caught a glimpse of Wenzl a few rows behind them, bow in hand. Townsfolk crowded around the marching line of soldiers, shouting questions or pleading with them to ride out to their family’s farms first. The soldiers ignored these people and pushed through them. Moonfane’s town guard would soon enough clear them out and order people back indoors. They would handle things within the Barrier, while the garrison handled things outside it. Vetch thought of his parents at their tannery just up the road from the West Gate. And then of Lily. Her parents and brother were also outside the Barrier’s protection.

“What in the hell is going on out there?” shouted the captain as they neared the South Gate. “And stop ringing the damned bells; we’re here!”

The South Gate’s bell was stifled, but all the others in town and outside continued ringing. A soldier on duty above the gate shouted down, “Riders on horseback out there, Captain! We’ve had a few herdsmen and shepherds ride in, and runners from th’other gates, and it’s the same on all sides. They seem to be after the livestock. None’ve come within an arrow’s flight of town yet.”

“Did I hear you right, soldier? In all directions?” the captain asked.

“All of ‘em, Cap’n. ‘Cept from the mountains.”

Vetch heard the captain swear and then they were striding on through the gate to the stables. The two soldiers above the gate came down the ladder and fell in with them. When they were all mustered out on the moonlit grounds before the stables, Captain Tarese halted them and made two swift cutting gestures with her arm at the massed soldiers, roughly dividing them into three groups.

“Trimm, you take that group and head down the east road,” she ordered. “Vetch, that group and the south road. The rest of you are with me up Tanner’s Road. I want everyone on horseback, you hear me? Focus on driving them away from any herds and habitations. If it’s as simple as running ‘em off, then run ‘em off. If they want to make a fight of it, then indulge ‘em, but keep yourselves between any attackers and Moonfane itself. If you have to regroup, give three horn blasts and fall back to your gate. Mount up!”

To the untrained eye, it would look like chaos, but Vetch and his fellow soldiers had trained in drills like this so many times it came instinctively. Sleepy stable hands had already begun bringing out the garrison’s horses at the first peal of bells, while those horses still in their stalls were quickly retrieved and saddled by their owners. In a trice, all were mounted up and organized back into their groups. None of them needed to wait for any signal. As soon as boots were in stirrups, then hooves were pounding the earth in three directions out to the pastures. When livestock were being stolen, or farmsteads harassed, every passing minute mattered.

Vetch felt a moment’s unease that he was assigned neither the road upon which his parents lived, nor the one that led out to Lily’s family’s dairy, but he stuffed that feeling down. Every man and woman in the garrison had at least one family member or friend or sweetheart outside of the Barrier that they’d want to see safe first, but good soldiers put that aside in order to protect the town as a whole, because that was their job. Vetch considered himself a good soldier. He’d been put in the lead of one of the groups. That meant his captain trusted him, and his fellow soldiers did, too. He’d give none of them any reason to regret him being given that responsibility.

He kicked his mare into a full gallop and his garrison-mates followed suit, pounding the dirt down the wide south road.

“Spread out!” he ordered. “Let ‘em see our numbers!”

The soldiers did as commanded, sweeping their horses out into a rough geese’s V spanning the entire road. The night was loud. Their own horses’s hooves thundered in their ears, and they could hear the nearing turmoil of other horses and the attackers’s shouts somewhere out in the night, and the lowing and grunting of agitated livestock, along with the now pervasive alarm bells clanging from seemingly all directions. The sounds combined to create an agitation in Vetch himself. He had drilled with his fellow soldiers for attacks like this, and he had ridden out to drive off small bands of yak thieves. Neither drills, nor running off small bands of thieves, was experience enough to allow him to entirely cage the nerves sizzling through him now. Did any soldiers ever become truly acclimated to the act of riding out to what could prove a full-scale confrontation? To know they must draw swords and have swords drawn on them? And here his captain had rattled off his name to ride at the head of one group of defenders without a second thought. He himself was given no first thought. Perhaps it was better that way. There were yak rustlers out there—many of them, it appeared—and the garrison’s job was to drive them off. With arrow and blade, if required. It was no more complicated than that. Vetch kicked his mare’s sides again and charged ahead.

Then the tone of the night changed so abruptly, it was as if a storming, clouded sky had become blue and clear with the snap of a finger. All around them, the distant alarm bells ceased. It wasn’t that a few stopped ringing and others soon followed suit. In all directions, out in the dark of the pastures and distant farmsteads ranging around Moonfane Forge town for miles, every last bell stopped sounding at once.

Some of the soldiers eased their horse’s gallops in confusion, causing the line their group had formed to break apart. But even before Vetch could whip them back into form and urge them onward, they all the rest of them had to rein in to an easy trot, and then a walk, because of what loomed up out of the darkness ahead. The road, and all the surrounding land to either side of it, was overrun with yaks. Edgy and restive, the great beasts milled aimlessly all around them as far as the eye could see, looking like hulking apparitions in the moonlight.

The soldiers spread out to take their horses warily through the out-of-place herd, staring all around them at the eerie scene with disquiet.

“What on this earth?” said one man under his breath.

“Did they drive them out of their pens and leave them?” asked another.

“Vetch,” said one soldier off to his right. She brought her horse alongside his and spoke quietly. “Could be they meant this to slow us up. While they make off with all the animals they could take farther out.”

“That’d be awfully organized for yak thieves,” said the first soldier.

“Why’d the bells all stop at once?” came a voice from the back of their group.

“Everybody, quiet,” said Vetch. “Remember what we’re about here. We get through these animals as fast as we can and then we ride hard again. We’re not done until we see the rustlers off with our own eyes. Like Cap’n Tarese said, drive them off if we can, but be ready to fight, too. Bows and arrows first.”

His words were heeded. Faces became grim in the pale night. Ennric brought his horse up alongside Vetch’s. The old soldier said not a word, only shared a stone-faced look with Vetch and nudged his horse into a trot, carelessly weaving through the shifting yaks. Vetch did the same, as did the other soldiers around him.