The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

The entire town, or what was left of it, was rank with the smell of charred wood and straw. It stank, and the remaining smoke from still-smoldering buildings made the inner nostrils feel as if pricked by needles. What was worse was the undercurrent of burnt flesh—the animals and townsfolk who’d not been able to escape the many blazes. That had been the most difficult part of the long night of battling fires and searching for wounded, arriving too late and finding the scorched remains of people buried beneath the smoking timbers of their own homes or shops. Whether they had been killed outright by the raiders or had simply succumbed to the smoke and flames while hiding mattered little now; it still made Vetch sick to think about. He had not slept, and his stomach had turned out what little food he’d attempted to eat.

It had been a long, difficult, and horrific night. There was only a smattering of garrison soldiers remaining, many of those injured. There were even fewer of the town guard left alive. None of Moonfane Forge’s district heads were yet accounted for. Of those townsfolk who were able, many had simply organized themselves into small teams to fight the worst of the blazes. Others had searched for any who still breathed amongst the dead. Some people had simply roamed through the streets with dead eyes, calling out for loved ones who would never respond.

The garrison had done what they could. There was no use guarding the town from any return of the raiders, as there were far too few Moonfane Forge soldiers left to repel any kind of attack, so they had joined their fellow townsfolk in whichever tasks were deemed most urgent. Vetch himself had worked on a bucket brigade throughout much of the night. They succeeded in saving some homes, but for the most part it served only to staunch additional damage. One of the houses they could not save was that belonging to Mage Marigold. It had already burned to the ground by the time Vetch had arrived in hope of finding her and Lily. The ashes of the place had been too hot still for Vetch to search through them, and so he had reluctantly gone to help elsewhere. He had tried to tell himself throughout the night that they would have escaped, that Lily would not have remained in the house had she been there during the attack, that she would have carried Marigold to safety with her. But no one he spoke to had seen either mage since before the attack began.

When the next sickly morning had dawned, when everything that could be done about the fires had been, people had turned to collecting the dead and laying them to rest. The cemetery just northwest of town had grown substantially in only half a day, and continued to grow as more bodies were found. With a gut-wrenching feeling of somehow being responsible, Vetch had watched Wenzl go into the ground. The boy’s stark face appeared even more youthful having been washed of blood in preparation for burial. Only his garrison uniform, and the memories of his actions in the battle, marked him a soldier. Trimm was laid to rest beside him, and others who had been too horribly wounded to identify. At the head of the long line of new soldiers’s graves was that of Captain Tarese. There had been an additional pall over everyone gathered when she was lowered into the ground. Not a one of Moonfane Forge’s soldiers could fathom what would happen now without her leadership.

Vetch had left after that and made his way back into town to the pile of gray ashes and blackened support timbers that had been Mage Marigold’s home. There, he had rooted through the warm ashes by himself for what felt like hours, fearing to find any remains of the old mage or of Lily. When at length he was finally certain that neither of them had been there, the relief that he’d hoped would come failed to proffer itself to him. He was trying not to fear the worst, but with every passing hour, the most unthinkable of those fears were rooting themselves in him. If Lily and Marigold had not been in their house, if they had not perished in the fire, then where were they?

That question is what had brought Vetch to where he now presently sat, at the end of the narrow track that led from Moonfane Forge’s East Gate down to Lily’s family’s dairy. The glimmer of hope that had caught at Vetch when he’d first had the thought to seek her there had been mercilessly snuffed out when he’d seen the charred wreckage of the farmhouse in the distance. For a second time that day, with his stomach twisted with dread, he had sifted through ashes for the body of the girl who had become more to him than just his lifelong friend. He had not found her or Marigold. But he had found three other bodies there; Lily’s mother, father, and younger brother.

Vetch sat now, resting in the mild afternoon sunlight beside the three new graves in which he had buried them at the edge of their front garden. In his nose were the scents of char and burnt bodies, but also of newly turned earth and the new spring grass in the pastures. Would he ever be able to disassociate those pleasant aromas from those of loss and death again? He didn’t know. When he had rested long enough, he left.

On his way back up the road to town, Vetch was unsurprised to meet Ennric coming to find him.

“Was Marigold there?” the old soldier asked, even as his hardened expression made it clear he had already read the answer in Vetch’s eyes.

Vetch shook his head. He had never imagined a man could be this weary and still stand. “No. Nor Lily.” It was needless to add, but he did so anyway. “Her family, though ...” Ennric nodded before Vetch had to make himself say it. What was worse, finding Lily alive and having to tell her about her family’s deaths, or finding she was amongst the dead and spared the pain of knowing? Vetch immediately felt guilty over the traitorous thought, made worse by the fact that his own parents had survived the attack. He had gotten word that morning that they were safe out at their tannery. It didn’t seem fair, who had died and who hadn’t, and how little difference there was in what went into deciding one against the other during the raid.

Ennric sniffed and put his arm around Vetch’s shoulders. “Come on. Food and a place to sit. That’s what you need.” They fell into step and together trudged back up the road into town.

“What do we do?” Vetch asked. Their path took them in the direction of what had been Mage Marigold’s home. For a moment Vetch wondered where they were going, before he recalled that many streets were still blocked by detritus or dead livestock and that to get anywhere meant finding alternate routes.

“You’re asking me?” Ennric said. The man winced and adjusted his broken left arm in the sling that now held it. Vetch noted that Ennric wasn’t wearing his sword, despite his sword arm still being sound. The old soldier had clearly taken some knocks in the battle, but looked a whole sight better than he had the night prior. The gash he’d taken just above his hair line had been cleaned and stitched up. Vetch bore stitches of his own over his right cheekbone, not to mention the bruises.

“Your wife and daughters okay?” Vetch asked, the thought suddenly coming to him.

Ennric grunted an affirmation. “My Arlette blocked the door and waited things out with her grandfather’s sword in hand the whole night. Th’raiders never made it up that high in the Residential, thank goodness. Eike was outside town visiting her older sister and her husband at their little farm. All are well.” He offered a weighted smile.

“I am gladdened to hear that,” said Vetch, though in truth, no good news could outweigh all the bad pressing on him.

Their boots scuffing the dirty cobbles was the only sound made between them for a time. Then Ennric said quietly, “We’ll find Lily, Vetch.”

Vetch feared as much to voice a similar optimism as he did to voice his doubts, so he remained quiet and felt shamed for it. Gray clouds had started to roll in from the mountain overhead to cover the sky, and a cooler breeze was kicking up. The smell of the first light raindrops hitting the dusty streets was an overture to the steady sprinkling that soon began falling. Ennric cursed the cold droplets and struggled to tug his collar higher without jostling his broken arm in its sling.

“You hear that just then?” Vetch asked. He paused in the road.

“No,” grumbled Ennric. “I didn’t hear anything. Let’s get out of this damned rain.”

“Wait. Be quiet a moment,” said Vetch. Despite giving him a sour look, Ennric paused and obeyed.

A faint call reached their ears between the raindrops. “Help! Help me!”

The two weary soldiers shared a look. Ennric lifted a stubby finger and pointed. “Up that way?”

Vetch nodded and took the lead, jogging toward the weak cries while Ennric followed more slowly. They were on the same street upon which Marigold’s house had once stood. In fact, Vetch could see its remains up the way, but the cries came from nearer, from another half-burned husk of a home. As Vetch came nearer and could hear the calls more clearly, he knew it was not Lily’s voice. But it was a survivor and he would find them.

“Where are you?” Vetch called out, scanning the various fire-damaged dwellings that stood out amongst their untouched neighbors like rotten teeth in a smile.

The cries stopped for a moment, then, “Over here! Help me! Get me out from here, please!”

Before Vetch was the partially tumbled down remnants of a large house whose entire front half had collapsed from being weakened by fire. Yet the back of the house, while scorched and blackened, still stood. Vetch could view inside all the rooms in both stories as if it were a pastry that had been sliced in half to reveal its layers. The muffled cries issued from somewhere in all the debris.

“Hang on, keep talking,” Vetch called back. He followed the pleas, which began to devolve into a series of relieved sobs as he scrambled across piles of ash, charred portions of furniture, and sections of inner walls and roof timbers that had tumbled out into the street. His boot slipped on a chunk of decorative mosaic made slick by the rain and, in the process of stopping himself from falling, dislodged more bits of wood and detritus that fell away to reveal the partially burned corpse of a man. For all the death Vetch had already seen, the sight of the gentle rain cleaning the caked ash off the dead man’s face stunned him. Yet another one of Moonfane Forge’s people he had failed to protect. With an effort, he tore his gaze from it. He swallowed and steeled himself and went more carefully across the hill of loose debris. There was one here he could save, at least. “Where are you? Speak up!” he grunted as he climbed.

“Here ... I’m here. Please,” a young man’s voice sobbed. “My legs are trapped.”

At last Vetch clambered over a mostly intact bed frame and found where the man was trapped. He could just see the shadow of his face beneath an entire section of the second story’s floor that had fallen and created something of a roof overtop a little cavity in the debris. It had probably saved the man’s life when part of the house had fallen, despite it also pinning him there.

“Found him?” came Ennric’s voice from the street. “Need my help?”

After a moment, Vetch answered, “Stay there, old man. I can shift this.” To the man trapped under the rubble, he said, “I’m going to try and lift this. You pull your legs free then and take my arm.”

“Please,” was the only response Vetch received, but he was already putting his shoulder underneath the section of floor. With a grunt, he shoved it a few inches upward.

“That do it? Are you free? Hurry and take my hand!” He heard the man scrambling and shifting and more debris crumbling into the cavity, but then the man reached his skinny arm out and grasped Vetch’s hand. Vetch pulled and could feel by the man’s movement that his legs were freed. He let the section of floor down gently and grabbed at the man’s shirt with his other hand. As Vetch pulled, the man clawed his way up and out of the little hollow. He made a sound somewhere between relief and surprise as Vetch took hold of his surcoat and dragged him bodily over the pile of wet debris to the street. Behind them, the piece of flooring collapsed into the cavity with a large puff of ash dust.

Vetch had felt relief at first, having found this surviving guardsman, for it was the Moonfane Forge town guard colors he was dressed in. But then Vetch had caught sight of the man’s face as he was dragging him free of the hole and recognition had flared, and along with it anger. Now, he let go of the man’s surcoat and sat down on the cobblestones beside Ennric’s boots. Before them, the man got to his hands and knees and coughed violently for a time before breaking out into sobs of joy.

“Thank you. Thank you. Oh ... by all the spirits and hells, I thought I was going to die. Thank you.” He looked up into the faces of his saviors then and the expression of relief on his face changed to one of confusion. Then, of fear.

Vetch got to his feet and said to Ennric, “Would you look who it is?”

Beside him, the old soldier glowered down at the scrawny man with the nest of unkempt black hair. “Well, I’ll be damned,” said Ennric. “It’s our tavern-brawler.”

“How’d you get out of your cell?” Vetch demanded. “And why are you wearing a guardsman’s uniform? Where’d you get that?”

Still blubbering on his hands and knees, Slouk looked up into the two soldiers’s hard faces. Vetch and Ennric saw the brief change in the man’s eyes the instant before Slouk jumped up onto his feet and made a wild attempt at dashing off.

Vetch cursed and tried for an unsuccessful grab at him. The scrawny man was fast. Ennric was closer than Vetch. The old soldier just got a fistful of the loose surcoat and yanked the man back and off his feet.

“Shit,” Ennric growled, as the action jolted his broken arm. He followed up with a kick to Slouk’s jaw that caused the man to yelp and cover his face. “Don’t try that again!”

Slouk wailed pitifully, “I won’t! I won’t run again. Stop!” As he lay there clutching his jaw, Vetch bent and ripped the brown and yellow surcoat unceremoniously off the man.

“Where’d you get this,” he asked once more, holding it up balled in his fist.

“Probably took it off a dead man,” said Ennric.

“I didn’t, I didn’t, I just found it,” moaned Slouk. “They let me out of the cell, said I could fend for myself. I found the shirt. I was cold.”

“Horseshit,” said Ennric.

Vetch stooped and pulled the knife from Slouk’s belt. “And this?” he said. “I remember this one. I suppose one of our people just gave it back to you?”

“What in all the hells ...” said Ennric. “How’d he get that back? It should’ve been safe in our barracks.”

Vetch had noticed a rattling sound when he’d taken the knife. He turned it over in his hands and then noticed how the handle was not quite securely affixed to the blade. He worked the knife handle side to side a couple times and then gave it a sharp tug, yanking it apart. Against Slouk’s desperate protests, Vetch poured the lockpicks from the knife handle into his open palm. These, he showed to Ennric. Both soldiers turned grim expressions onto the pitiful man at their feet.

“Okay, I escaped!” he stuttered. “You were holding me longer than was fair! Your town was being attacked and I saw my chance, so what? Don’t you have bigger problems to deal with than me? Let me go, I’ll leave here and not come back, I swear it!”

Ennric very deliberately pressed his boot down on the man’s ankle until he stopped talking, and then applied a little more pressure than that to keep him in place. With his good eye on Slouk, he consulted with Vetch. “Awful long way from the jail to here. If he’d wanted to escape, he’d have gone back to the South Gate, not come this way.” The old soldier pawed rain from his face and squinted over at the partially burned house Vetch had pulled the man from. It was one of the largest dwellings on the street. While it was in ruins now, it was easy to see it for the home of someone with means. “I think he was looting,” Ennric concluded.

“No no no no, wait wait wait ...” began Slouk.

“Shut up,” said Vetch, and Ennric applied more pressure to the man’s ankle to drive the command home. Vetch looked at the set of lockpicks in his hand, and then he turned his head and gazed up the street to where Mage Marigold’s little house had once stood, the place nothing but a blackened lot now.

“What do you think, Vetch?” prompted Ennric.

Vetch clenched the lockpicks in his fist. “Not looting, no. He shows up directly before there’s a raid on our livestock, a few days before our town is attacked, with lockpicks on his person. And he gets out of his cell during the attack, and somehow isn’t killed by any of the raiders, and now we find him here, right outside the home of our town’s mage. That seems like more than coincidence to me.”

“You think he was with the raiders somehow?” asked Ennric, his face creasing in puzzlement.

“What? No!” Slouk protested. “No! What mage? I don’t know anything about that!” He looked from one soldier to the other and shook his head wildly, eyes wide and fearful.

“Did you set these houses ablaze?” Vetch pressed. “Were you sent into town before them to find Marigold? Where is she?” he demanded harshly.

Slouk cowered and tried to curl himself into a ball on the wet cobbles. “I don’t know! I didn’t do anything. I don’t know who that is!”

Vetch had had enough. The stress of the fighting, seeing all the death and devastation, burying his friends, his town’s people, Lily’s family. And Lily. Where was Lily? That came back to the forefront of his mind like an avalanche. Where was Lily? With an inarticulate shout, he hurled the lockpicks and knife away and reached down to grab Slouk. He dragged the wailing man back into the rubble of the half-collapsed house to the partially scorched corpse still lying amidst the ashes. Grabbing Slouk’s hair, he shoved his face close to that of the dead man and held him there mere inches apart from his lifeless eyes.

“There!” Vetch shouted. “Take a good look at him! Look at what you and your friends have wrought! You were a part of this!”

Slouk struggled against Vetch’s strong grip, sobbing, “No no no, I wasn’t!”

“Vetch ...” Ennric began.

Ignoring the soft rebuke, Vetch only pushed the man’s face closer to the corpse’s. “You knew they were coming. You knew what was to happen and you said nothing! You were part of this. You did this! We should kill you right now.” With that, Vetch released the man and stood up. In one smooth motion, he drew his sword.

“Vetch!” Ennric barked forcefully.

“No!” Slouk screeched. “I didn’t! I didn’t know! Don’t kill me!”

“Then speak the truth!” shouted Vetch.

Slouk had scurried back from the dead man and now lay in a heap at Vetch’s feet, pleading. “I didn’t know! I swear to you, and by the only family I have left, I didn’t know. It was The Lady! The Lady did all of this. They took her. I was only hiding from them. Please ...” The man broke down into racking sobs, clutching at Vetch’s boots.

With a look back over his shoulder at Ennric, Vetch sheathed his sword and dragged Slouk back to the street, where he dropped him. The man sat there pitiably and rubbed at his face. Ennric scratched his whiskers and looked on nonplussed.

“What lady?” asked Vetch. While he no longer shouted at the man, the edge of anger in his words made it clear he would tolerate no more attempts at avoiding his questions.

“I don’t know,” said Slouk miserably. “There was a lady with dark hair. Raven dark. She came with soldiers. There were soldiers everywhere, so I hid in the house. They took someone, an old woman, from there.” He pointed up the street to where Mage Marigold’s house had stood. “I had nothing to do with it. I wanted only to escape the town.”

Vetch drummed his fingers on the pommel of his sword, aware that the scrawny man was watching him do it. “This lady and her soldiers, they took the old woman out of that house. Then what?”

Slouk looked from Vetch to Ennric and back. “That’s all. They put the old woman in a carriage and left. The soldiers burned the houses as they went.”

Ennric made a gruff sound in his throat and furrowed his brow. “And you just stayed put in a burning house?”

“Not because I wanted to! Do you think I’m so stupid I would have stayed in there if I could’ve escaped? The Lady, she ... she had magic. She waved her arm across the house as she was leaving. Like that. And I was trapped behind one of those magical walls, and I couldn’t leave. And then the whole place came down on me and I thought I was good as dead.”

The red of anger drained from Vetch’s face, to be replaced with stark white. “Wait. Do that again,” he said. “That arm motion. Repeat it.”

Slouk looked blankly up at him. Ennric kicked the man’s boot. “You heard him. Do it.”

“Okay, okay!” The man looked as if he feared some sort of trap, but he obeyed. He raised his arm, hand turned up with his palm flat and outward, and swept it across his body. “Like ... like that,” he said.

Ennric looked to Vetch. Vetch nodded.

“Which way did they leave by,” Ennric prodded.

“What of the girl?” Vetch cut in. “There would have been a girl with the old woman.”

Again, the man looked as if he feared to answer. Then he shook his head. “She killed the girl. Used magic to blast her right through the roof and into the sky. She screamed, and that was that. Killed her just like that.”

Vetch clenched his eyes shut hard. He turned and began to walk up the street. It was as if the bottom had dropped out of his entire being. The cobblestones beneath his feet felt insubstantial and pitiless. He vaguely marked Ennric saying something to him, then to their prisoner. But he didn’t care. He found himself standing before the black ruins at the top of the street, where Lily had breathed her last, and before his eyes was a despair so acute that it could only be overshadowed by the cold anger flaring inside him. In that moment, he could not tell who it was for most, this Lady, for what she had done ... or himself, for not preventing it.