The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

How much difference a day could make. That was the first thought that came to Vetch as he stepped out of the barracks to meet the temperate spring morning. Only twenty-four hours prior he had been decked out in his heavy soldier’s uniform, sweating and sucking in dust as he rode behind his captain on their inspection of the damaged fences, followed by a long day of running all about town relaying information and then waiting in case he was needed again later. And now? Now, he was fresh from a brisk bath, dressed in his nice townsman’s shirt, trousers and soft leather boots, and on his way to meet Lily in the markets. It was a beautiful day and his feet felt light on the cobbles as they led him to her. Not even all the livestock still being driven through the streets to various holding pens and warehouses about town would delay him from arriving on time. He merely diverted to the winding side streets and alleys he’d known since he was a boy, cutting through gardens and little plazas, away from the bustle of the main thoroughfares and their busy establishments. He hopped over a short wall and then pushed his hair back from his face. It had gotten to that awkward length where it would get in his eyes but was not yet long enough to tie back. He would have to have someone trim it for him later. Then, just as quickly, he didn’t care. A broad smile spread across his face. Lily was waiting on him, and that was the only thing he cared about this day, a day they would have all to themselves, together.

The sounds of all the yaks and their herdsmen a few streets over—and the complaints of townsfolk who were none too pleased at having gardens trampled and narrow gates shouldered through—at first disguised a more distant sound building. When it had grown enough for Vetch’s ears to catch it, he at first believed he couldn’t be hearing what he thought he was. But it grew and grew, a wretched thundering. A general clamor began to course its way through the streets of the town at the edge of hearing until it was drowned out by screams. The alarm bells at the gates began ringing and then there was the unmistakable hiss of arrows in flight, and the alarm bells were cut off.

Vetch felt the hairs stand on the back of his neck and his entire body became chilled. Immediately he turned back the way he had come and began running, jumping garden walls and pounding the cobbles of little hilly side streets. To the barracks. He must get back to the barracks and his sword, to join his fellow soldiers. He met a rush of townsfolk as he neared the main road up from the South Gate. They jostled with panicked livestock and with each other in their wild flight to get away from the gate and the central part of town. Vetch felt like he was swimming against a river current as he shoved his way against the grain through the throng and across the street. He had to grasp a lumbering yak’s horns and clamber gracelessly over the lowing beast to reach the street that led back to the barracks. But this path, too, was choked with people and animals. One stubborn herdsman was off his horse and pulling desperately at her reins while the animal steadfastly refused to shift.

“Move, damn you!” Vetch growled his frustration at anyone and everyone around him. He shoved the herdsman. “Leave the animals and get to the Silversmith’s District!” That was where people were supposed to flee to if there were ever an attack. The old buildings there were large and thick-timbered and could easily be barricaded from the inside.

Vetch chanced a look back at the South Gate then and caught his first sight of the raiders, confirming what he had already guessed: Moonfane Forge was under attack. The arrow-pierced bodies of the soldiers who’d been on gate duty lay across the parapet. Through the gate and up the main street, the raiders were pouring into town on horseback. They had been somewhat held up by the clot of livestock in the way, but were pushing and driving the animals forward as they came. Some had dismounted and were stabbing and slashing indiscriminately at any townsfolk unfortunate enough to be in their range. Others were tossing lit torches onto roofs and through windows of buildings as they passed. They wore no uniforms that Vetch could see at a glance—no colors or patterns or crests. Instead, they were clad in a mishmash of different styles of plate or chainmail or leather armor, so that Vetch could not even tell what region or country they might be from. He hated to run away from the invaders, but he’d do little good without a weapon.

His soft boots pounded the cobblestones up the way to the barracks. As the long stone building came into sight—his fellow garrison soldiers already pushing their way toward him—a raider stepped out from a side alley directly into Vetch’s path. They nearly bumped into one another, and the raider’s face appeared almost surprised through the eye holes of his helm. It was his mistaking Vetch for a regular townsman in his normal clothes that gave Vetch the upper hand in reacting. As the man went to lift his sword, Vetch caught him by the wrist and put his elbow into the man’s chest, charging forward to shove him roughly against the wall of the building behind him. The raider dropped his sword to claw Vetch’s forearm away from pressing higher on his throat. They struggled and suddenly they were on the ground, punching, clawing, and kneeing in a wild and primal fashion. Vetch managed to rip the man’s helm off and was met by a face alike to his own in age, but with pale and scarred features and closely shorn hair. Vetch went for the man’s throat again, but was countered with a knee to the gut. Vetch felt all the breath go out of him and haphazardly pushed himself up onto his knees to narrowly dodge the punch that followed.

The raider got up into a crouch, showing blood-lined teeth in a grimace of advantage. Still gasping painfully, Vetch didn’t anticipate the next punch in time. Hard knuckles clipped his jaw and set stars to capering before his eyes. He staggered up. He needed to get out of this man’s range, to get his breath and balance back. But his opponent saw this too and made a wild grab at Vetch when he tried to dodge backwards. The man’s fingers ended up clasping around the coin pouch on Vetch’s belt and tearing it loose. Coins went scattering everywhere across the cobblestones as the raider was left off-balance and holding only the empty pouch. It was enough of an opening for Vetch. As the man tried to stand, Vetch met him with a brutal headbutt to the face. Vetch felt a splash of hot pain explode across his cheek bone as the man before him bellowed and threw his hands up in defense. Vetch got his own boots more solidly underneath him and kicked the man hard down onto his back, then proceeded to stomp his face and neck until he went limp.

There was a ringing in Vetch’s ears as he stood doubled over with his hands on his knees recovering his breath. He knew he should be in more pain than he was, but at present all he could feel was the heat of the blood dripping from his right cheek. He watched the dark drops make red flower patterns on the cobbles before the toes of his boots. As the ringing faded, the sounds of battle, of clanging steel and shouts and screams, reached his ears. He forced himself upright and looked around to regain his bearings. All around him in the streets, pockets of vicious fighting had broken out between Moonfane Forge’s black and silver clad soldiers and the motley invaders. The area had mostly cleared of fleeing townsfolk and frightened animals, though Vetch could see those who hadn’t escaped the raiders’s blades lying wherever they’d fallen. Ugly brown smoke billowed and swirled all across the horrific scene as torched buildings belched flames from their windows and roofs. Which way had he been running before? Where was the barracks?

“... tch! Vetch! ... VETCH!” Vetch whipped his attention around and found Ennric striding for him. The old veteran’s blade was already bloodied, and in his other hand was Vetch’s sword. There was none of the stiffness in Ennric’s movements that had been there the day before as he tossed Vetch his sword. “Looking for that?”

Vetch caught it and almost smiled. The familiar texture of its grip against his palm, the balanced heft of its weight; it was like a spell had been broken then, having his blade in hand. He was a Moonfane Forge soldier. This was his town. These were his people. He and his fellows would fight these raiders to their final drops of blood. “Thanks, old man!” he yelled above the tumult. Side by side, he and Ennric charged into the heaviest of the fighting.

Blades clashed and crunched, fighters clawed, choked and bit, lost their weapons and wrestled in the dirt and blood and manure. Horses screamed and bolted wildly away from the fighting and fire, not caring who or what they trampled. Vetch cut down a raider, while Ennric dispatched another beside him. A garrison soldier was taken by an arrow. The raiders had positioned archers above the gate who were picking off anyone they could. Across the street, Vetch caught a short glimpse of Wenzl, blonde hair partially wet with blood, skillfully taking on two raiders at once with his blade. And then Vetch was narrowly fending off the first swing of an axe from his right. He turned to face off against the haggard looking battler who had swung it.

Whomever these raiders were, they were hardened fighters. They seemed to neither need, nor be taking, orders from anyone amongst their ranks, yet they fought with precision as well as brutality. None of them went down easily, and their numbers were only being reinforced as yet more swarmed through the unguarded town gate. Vetch knew he couldn’t think about the battle as a whole just then, only about the man in front of him. After all the years of training and drilling and sparring, his sword arm moved almost of its own accord. He hadn’t even the protection of his leather-reinforced garrison uniform to deflect blows, so he fought as if the first blow he took would be his last. He countered and parried and stabbed and slashed. He lashed out with the pommel of his sword. And when his opponent was breathing hard and finally let his guard drop too low, Vetch targeted a place on his body unprotected by chainmail and drove his blade home between the man’s ribs. He went down with hardly a sound and Vetch promptly forgot about him and looked for the next threat.

He realized, however, that despite any of the individual fights that he and his fellow soldiers won, they were still being driven back. Worse than that, many of the raiders just joining the fray were bypassing the fighting altogether and riding past them and deeper into town, and many of those also carried lit torches. Above all the noise, Vetch recognized Captain Tarese’s voice shouting out over their ranks.

“Fall back! Moonfane, move back!”

Inexplicably, the alarm bell off at the West Gate started ringing again. It added a strange tone of absurdity to the milieu, Vetch thought. “The Silversmith’s District!” someone shouted. Vetch sought out Captain Tarese with his eyes and began moving back toward her. Some garrison soldiers were doing the same. Others were still engaged in life-or-death struggles. Someone slammed into Vetch’s side and he turned expecting another fight, only to find it was Neschi who had run into him as she, too, retreated. Her eyes were wide and her face dirt-smeared and bruised. Together, they and a small group of soldiers made it back to Captain Tarese. Then she was leading them on a jogging retreat back through the winding and hilly streets of town.

“Cap’n, where’re we going?” someone queried.

“Silversmith’s,” she answered breathlessly. The captain was already bloodied in places herself, her sword certainly not the least of all.

Vetch realized that neither Ennric nor Wenzl were amongst their little group. The last Vetch had noticed of them, Wenzl had dispatched one opponent and was being pulled away from the other and into a side street by Ennric. And where was everyone else? The fighting had been scattered piecemeal all over the central area of town near the South Gate. Even now, he could hear and see fighting all around as they moved. Soldiers and town guards were fighting for their lives against pockets of raiders, even as more homes and establishments were now aflame and billowing choking brown smoke that shrouded the blue sky. How many of their town’s ranks had already fallen? Would they make the Silversmith’s District in time to set up a stronghold or would the raiders already be there? How much of Moonfane Forge had they already infiltrated, as they had undoubtedly attacked and come through all three town gates?

As if harboring the same thoughts, Captain Tarese said, “We fight and kill any of them that we can, and protect what we can. They must be after the silver, but that’s where most people will have fled. We protect the people first.”

“What about Marigold?” Vetch said. “We have to protect her.”

“Sent people to get her,” his captain answered shortly. “To take her to the Council Building.”

The primary duty of Moonfane Forge’s garrison was to protect the elderly mage, and so Vetch was not surprised their captain had already seen to that. But the thing on his mind now, that he simply could not shake, was who would see to Lily’s protection? He hoped desperately she had been with her teacher when soldiers came to bring her to the Silversmith’s Council Building. He didn’t want to imagine her having been in the crowded markets already when the raiders fell upon them.

Tirelessly, he and his fellow soldiers jogged behind their captain until they reached the narrow road that marked the beginning of the Silversmith’s District. Only a week prior, Vetch had stood in this same road with Ennric and Wenzl, the day the new recruit had arrived in town. As they approached the road’s apex now, Vetch soon had his hopes dashed that the fighting would not yet have reached the town’s oldest district. The raiders had beaten them there. Already, the town’s guardsmen and women were engaged in battle with at least a dozen raiders. If battle it could be called. Moonfane Forge’s town guard were a poor match for these unscrupulous invaders. A number of them already lay dead in the road. Heedless of the fighting, some of the raiders had sheathed their weapons and were carrying off ingots of silver and fine jewelry from the silver shops.

Vetch took all this in in a matter of seconds. It wasn’t only guards and soldiers who lay in the road. Some townsfolk, too, had not made it away in time. These raiders were killing and looting and burning Moonfane Forge, and they were winning.

Beside Vetch, Captain Tarese let out a roar of rage as she drew her sword and ran straight at the villains. Her soldiers would follow her through all the hells and back, and that’s what they did now. Vetch and his companions roared their challenge together and ran crashing into the fight.

*

It sounded like a battle was being fought outside. Slouk pressed his face against the bars of his cell door and pleaded with the guardsman watching the outer door.

“What’s happening? What’s going on out there? Please, let me out!”

The guardsman didn’t even favor Slouk with a “shut up” this time. The man looked antsy. The sounds of battle were getting closer. No other guards had arrived with any information since all the noise had begun, so Slouk suspected this guardsman was just as in the dark as he was.

“Please,” Slouk tried one more time.

A loud scream issued from seemingly just outside the building. With one baleful look back at Slouk, the guardsman licked his lips and appeared to come to some decision. He pulled his keys from his belt, and for a moment Slouk felt a flood of relief, but instead of unlocking Slouk’s cell, the guardsman disappeared through a door on the other side of the room that Slouk could not see. When he returned, he had with him a pitted but serviceable short sword. Without a word, the guardsman left by the outer door, leaving Slouk unguarded for the first time since he’d been locked up.

Slouk watched the door. He didn’t want to face whatever it was that was happening outside. But he couldn’t stay either. He was already days late. And finally, finally, no guard was there watching his every move. Quickly, he grabbed up the flattened straw pillow from his pallet and pulled his hidden knife from therein. The dull blade was unimpressive and practically harmless, but that was the point. Slouk worked the hollow false handle free from the blade. From out of it, he shook his lockpicks into his open palm.

He overturned his water bucket and set it before the door. Standing on it, he could just hook his scrawny arm through the bars and reach the lock on the other side of his cell door. After testing a few different picks on the lock and deciding he could manage it, he set to work.