The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

Outside Moonfane Forge’s East Gate, surrounded by a guard of hand-picked raiders, Lady Iris raised her hand before her and moved it through the air as if searching for something unseen. When her fingers met no resistance, she dropped her arm by her side and a subtle smile came to her painted lips.

“At last,” she whispered. Then, commandingly, “Follow me.” Without turning back to her retinue, she walked purposefully through the unguarded gate and into Moonfane Forge. The straight, raven tresses of her unbound hair trailed and played about the small of her back as she went. To see her striding through the now-deserted streets of the town’s Residential District was to behold an image of a mythological war-maiden, if a war-maiden had spurned her armor for the rich dress of a noblewoman—expensive skirts and bodice that accentuated her buxom form, in magentas and purples that complimented her olive skin. Prominent cheekbones and a high brow gave Lady Iris the kind of chiseled features one would attribute to great heroines of days of yore. She knew this, and she carried herself to display it, chin held high and posture implying preeminence. Yet the effect stopped short of her dark eyes, which showed only disinterest as she stepped over bodies and strode between smoldering houses, searching.

She didn’t have to know in which of the idyllic little houses, amongst the many that crowded the twisty, hilly avenues, Mage-Matron Marigold would be. She could feel it. She found the place where it stood at the top of a hill, its paint peeling and rainspouts in need of repair. Lady Iris paused upon the front walk before the door.

“How provincial,” she said to herself. She turned then to the group of black-clad guards who had accompanied her and indicated the door. Two men stepped forward and impassively kicked it in. From inside was heard a short shriek of surprise. Lady Iris led the way in and followed the sound to the back bedroom. Her guards crowded in around her, but she could see now she hadn’t even needed them. There was her prize: Marigold, master Barrier-Caster, helpless and Slumbering. And only some willowy girl keeping watch over her. “Move aside,” Iris told the girl. When she only stood quaking and frightened, Iris spoke to the raiders. “Get her out of my way. Do whatever you wish with her.”

The two who had kicked the door in needed no second bidding. They stepped across the room and went to grab Lily. Before they could, Lily made a swift sweeping motion with her hand across her body and suddenly a golden, shimmering Barrier divided the room and blocked the two raiders from getting at Lily and Marigold behind her. The two put their hands to the Barrier and shoved against it in frustration.

“Stop,” Lady Iris commanded. “Get out of the way.” The two men grudgingly followed the order and stepped aside. Iris approached the Barrier and stared hard through it at Lily. “You?” Iris said quietly, before her voice rose in disbelief. “You? This twig of a tall, pale, tavern girl ... is Marigold’s apprentice?” Disbelief was quickly replaced with amusement as Iris voiced a lilting, dark laugh. “How endearing. Here. I will teach you more than she ever has, or ever will.”

With an almost apathetic wave of her hand, Iris dispelled Lily’s Barrier. Following up instantly, Lady Iris cast a Barrier spell of her own. Shimmering gold appeared in the shape of a cylinder around Lily, entrapping her. Lady Iris smirked then as she performed a twisting motion of her hand and watched the girl’s eyes widen as the cylindrical Barrier began to move, tightening and closing in around her.

“She never taught you how to do this, did she?” Iris taunted. She continued to cause the Barrier to squeeze in around Lily as she mentally dismissed the girl and stepped toward the Slumbering form of Marigold in her bed. She looked down upon the old woman.

“Get away from her!” Lily shouted. Somehow, she must have found a way to move her arm just enough, because, suddenly, the girl who was to be constricted dispelled Iris’s Barrier and cast yet another of her own. Iris found her herself physically rebuffed by a Barrier before she could lay a finger on the Slumbering Marigold. It was inconceivable. How could this mere apprentice manage such? With a seething anger in her face, Iris rounded on Lily.

“You little bitch!” she spat. “I could’ve made your death painless. Have it your way!”

In stark motions, one following after the other, Lady Iris practically clawed Lily’s second Barrier out of existence and then dragged one of her own up from the floor underneath Lily. Iris swept her hand quickly upward, and with that motion also went the Barrier. It lifted Lily clean off the floor and rapidly up at the ceiling. Lily screamed as she crashed through it, up through her own bedroom, and then was blasted clear through the roof of the house and away into the sky like a doll thrown by an angry child. One moment she was there, and the next, all that was left was the smoky sky seen through the hole in the roof, and the shingles and crumbled plaster littering the room.

Lady Iris swayed on her feet, but with an effort steadied herself. She flipped her hand at Marigold’s Slumbering form. “Bind her!” she ordered the raiders through clenched teeth. “And do it well, as we spoke about. And burn this place!” With that, she strode out of the house.

Waiting out in the street now was a carriage pulled by two horses. Soon, the raiders who had accompanied Lady Iris came outside with Marigold bound tightly by ropes around her hands, feet, arms, and legs. The Slumbering mage was loaded carefully into the carriage. A weathered raider bearing a pocked face, straight black hair tied in a tail, and a dark moustache with long sides that hung down below his chin stepped down from the carriage driver’s seat to the cobbles. He came to stand before Iris as another raider took his place on the carriage and started it away.

“Do you depart?” the raider asked.

Iris ran her fingers through her long hair and then shook it out as, behind her, flames started to lick up the inner windows of the house. “Yes. When you and your people are finished here, you know where to find me for your payment.” The man nodded stoically. “The rest of you ...” Iris said to her retinue. She paused and looked around her. From out of a side street, a little yellow mongrel of a dog had come limping toward them. With hardly a thought, Iris cast a cylindrical Barrier around the dog and then slowly tightened it, constricting the poor thing. It had time only for a confused yelp before the Barrier squeezed the life out of it. “Burn everything we pass,” she said, and looked back at her guards to make sure they were clear on her orders. “Everything. But we move quickly. I will need to Slumber in my own carriage soon.”

Lady Iris led the march back through the town. As she did, her guards torched as many homes and buildings as they could. And, as an extra cruelty, Iris herself paused at some houses long enough to cast Barriers around them, so that neither could anyone get near them to extinguish the flames until they had done their damage, nor any people hiding inside hope to escape.

Additional carriages and a larger retinue of mounted raiders awaited them at the town’s East Gate. From there they departed, leaving Moonfane Forge to its fate, and carrying away from it its beloved mage.

*

They had lost, and soon would lose everything. They had fought as hard as they could, and still the raiders had cut them down one by one. Vetch and Neschi were the only two left of those who had charged into the fight near the Silversmith’s District. The guardsmen and women were gone, as were the other garrison soldiers. If there were any others still alive and fighting elsewhere in town, they were unable to come to their aid. Captain Tarese lay dead at Vetch’s feet. She had taken a number of the raiders with her, but in the end, it was not enough. Vetch had taken a dozen glancing cuts and blows himself. His townsman’s shirt was blood-soaked and torn. His hands ached from clutching his sword too tightly and deflecting so many jarring blows. His eyes burned with sweat and his hair kept obscuring his vision. He didn’t know how much longer he could continue to lift his arms, but still he fought on. At some point, to his shame, he had ceased fighting for Moonfane Forge, and begun doing so entirely to stave off death for as long as he could. He knew it was coming, but he was scared to face it.

He stood back-to-back with Neschi. She growled viscerally with every sword thrust she turned away, as noisy in battle as she was out of it. Vetch could feel her exhaustion through her back. Both of them were becoming sluggish in their reactions. It seemed as if the handful of raiders who engaged them now were only toying with them. They laughed, they feinted in, they made cuts meant to wound rather than kill, letting Vetch and Neschi see their own deaths coming from well off. In fact, it seemed only the preoccupation of some of these raiders wanting to join their fellows in the looting that had allowed Vetch and Neschi to hold them off as long as they had. Certainly, some had abandoned the fight to go picking through what valuables were left in the surrounding shops and homes.

Vetch deflected a slash from the raider before him and then was satisfied to land a lucky stab that pierced her leather armor just below her collar bone. It was a superficial wound. He hadn’t the strength left to drive his blade any deeper. She gritted her teeth in pain and then slammed the flat of her blade into Vetch’s elbow. He grunted as he felt his entire arm go numb and his fingers give out, letting his sword clatter to the cobbles. He stumbled onto his hands and knees and that caused Neschi to overbalance and fall down behind him. She held onto her blade, but something in her posture told Vetch that she, like him, was only waiting for the death blow to come.

“We go! We are leaving!” a gravelly voice ordered loudly. Vetch peered up through his sweat-soaked hair at the man who had arrived at the scene on horseback. It was the first time since the invasion had begun that Vetch saw a raider who looked like he might be their commander. He rode about berating the other raiders. “Take what you can carry now! No more! We go!”

There were grumbles, but the raiders followed the command. They began retreating with whatever valuables they could carry, those who still had horses swinging onto them and cantering away as if the fight had never mattered. The raider who had been about to kill Vetch barely spared him a sneering smile before she, too, went to scoop up whatever booty was left on the cobbles and flee. The one who had been battling Neschi did the same.

Vetch looked up at this raider commander and managed to the catch the man’s eyes. He looked weathered beyond his years, face pocked and nose crooked above a long black moustache that hung down below the jaw guards of his helm. What expression was it that passed across the man’s face as he looked down at Vetch. Detachment? Disdain? They held each other’s gaze for only a second or two before the man apparently dismissed these two remaining soldiers from his thoughts, reined his horse around, and trotted away down the cobbled street. Vetch crawled after him for a few feet, but the man was soon gone. Looking around, Vetch saw that he and Neschi were alone in the road. As quickly as the raiders had descended upon Moonfane Forge, they were now departing, like a sudden downpour in summer that passes quickly and leaves behind only the smell of wet earth to prove it had ever been.

Neschi’s sword scraped on the cobbles as she levered herself upright and then offered her hand to help Vetch up. All around them fires raged and bodies lay haphazardly in the road. Vetch knew it could only be mid-afternoon at the latest, yet all the thick, oily smoke in the air shrouded the town in darkness as if dusk were falling. He found his sword and was surprised at how much he ached all over simply to bend and pick it up.

He put his hand on Neschi’s shoulder. “Barracks,” he panted. “Gather anyone still alive.”

She nodded. “You?”

“Council Building. Marigold.” And Lily, he thought to himself. “Bring whoever you find there.”

Again, Neschi nodded, and then left him. Vetch stood a time longer catching his breath and then he ran. He took the shortest route he knew to the long flight of stone steps that led up to the town’s Council Building. He passed more bodies and scorched, smoldering structures. When he arrived at the Silversmith’s Council Building, he was encouraged to find it unmarred. He pounded on the barred door and announced himself. He was recognized by some inside and let in. Vetch entered the large room to a chorus of questions about the raid and exclamations about his own gruesome state. There were injured townsfolk, frightened old people, confused and wailing children. Vetch almost could not parse what he saw and heard. He was glad to find people had made it here to safety. But there were so few of them. He scanned the room desperately for Lily and did not see her. Nor did he see Marigold or the soldiers that would have accompanied her.

“Marigold,” he said, and his voice came out scratchy from how dry and smoke-abraded his throat was. He swallowed and tried again, louder. “Mage Marigold! Is she here? Has anyone seen her?” Vetch already knew she wasn’t there. Neither was Lily. The confused stares and sad shakes of heads that met his questions were like a punch in the gut.

“What’s happening out there?” someone asked.

“The raiders have left,” Vetch answered without thought.

“We’ve won? The garrison has fought them off?”

Vetch stared at the man, uncomprehending. “No,” he said. He raised his voice. “Everyone here, listen! If you are not already caring for the injured, come out. There are others hurt that need your help, and fires that need to be put out. Young and old, we need everyone who’s able!”

More questions followed, but Vetch ignored them and pushed his way back to the door. They’d have to organize and see to what of the remaining town and townsfolk they could themselves.

Again, Vetch ran, down the street and the long stairs. From them he could see over the entirety of Moonfane Forge. So much of it burned and smoldered. He could also see groups of the retreating raiders departing across the pastures in all directions. He couldn’t deal with any of that just now; he had to reach Marigold’s home and see to the mage’s safety. He prayed he would find Lily there, too. For one silly, fleeting moment, he convinced himself both of them would be safe because Marigold could cast a protective Barrier around their home. Just as soon, Vetch remembered that Marigold would be Slumbering by now. Was Lily yet capable of Casting a Barrier like that? He didn’t know.

It was difficult to recognize his own town with so many familiar landmarks reduced to smoking husks of charred timber, and as he pounded his way to the Residential District, a few times he took a wrong turn, or there was too much fire to allow his passage and he was forced to double back. At one point, he passed the bodies of two garrison soldiers lying in the road that ran between the town’s center and the part of town where Marigold lived. Only later would Vetch come to realize that these were the soldiers Captain Tarese had sent to retrieve the mage and carry her to safety. They had never even made it to her.

Up ahead, portions of the Residential District were all aflame. Vetch turned down a narrow street where the smoke was not so severe. Ahead of him, he saw a familiar figure sitting huddled in the middle of the street, amongst the bodies of Moonfane Forge soldiers and raiders both. Vetch recognized the old man’s broad back.

“Ennric? Ennric!” For a moment, the old man was still, and Vetch feared the worst. Then, he saw Ennric shift and the old soldier turned his head to look back over his shoulder with his good eye.

“Vetch?” he said, and his voice was pained.

Despite that, Vetch smiled in relief to see the man alive and he went to him. “You survived, old man,” he panted. “Knew you would.”

Ennric turned his face away again. “I couldn’t,” he mumbled.

“Couldn’t what?” Vetch asked.

“Couldn’t. I couldn’t ...”

Stone-faced, Vetch walked around to face Ennric. Half the old soldier’s face was caked in dried blood and his left arm hung limp at his side. Only as Vetch came before him did he then see that Ennric cradled someone against his body with one arm, his chin tucked in on the boy’s head as if to protect him. Vetch saw the bloodstained blonde hair, the young face that had been so vibrant only that morning when he had excitedly watched Moonfane Forge’s mage using her magic—Wenzl. The blood soaking the entire front of his uniform told the tale. He had been run clean through. That youthful face was pale and cold now, its eyes dim, and forever would be. The boy was dead.

Vetch sank heavily to the ground before Ennric, two soldiers alive amongst too many dead. Ennric met his gaze briefly and then the old soldier clenched his eyes shut and his face screwed up in despair. Vetch could do no more than press the heels of his hands to his blurring eyes and bow his head in anguish.