The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

The little jail stank. Vetch couldn’t think of a time it had ever smelled particularly nice, but the stench that greeted his nose upon entering the dank little building was far worse than what he’d grown to expect out of Moonfane Forge’s town guard. They always had run a tight ship. Then again, Vetch reflected, that was when there had been town guards to steer the ship at all. He looked at the rangy old man drowsing in his chair just inside the door. He hadn’t even woken upon Vetch’s entry. Vetch kicked the old man’s boot and he startled awake.

“What in the hells, boy? Scaring an old man like that!” he complained.

“You shouldn’t have been sleeping,” Vetch said. He held out his hand. “The keys we left with you?”

The oldster scowled at Vetch like he was an annoying child as he fished the keys out from his pocket and slapped them into Vetch’s hand. “Am I done here yet? When’s more food and ale coming?”

“What about food for me?” whined Slouk from his cell. The scrawny man pressed his face against the bars, eyes dark-ringed and sullen.

“Did you give him food?” Vetch pressed the man on guard.

“He didn’t!” said Slouk. “No food, wouldn’t take the waste bucket away, nothing! Let me out of here, damn you!”

The old man on guard cowered under the look Vetch turned upon him. If he’d thought to lie and refute the prisoner’s claims, he quickly thought better of it. “No one told me to! You just said to watch him and I have.”

Vetch looked at the plate sitting on the floor beside the old man’s chair. There was a crust of bread left on it, at least. Vetch bent and picked it up and then went to hand it through the bars to the prisoner.

“I’ll make sure you get a proper meal after this. Step back, I’m going to unlock the door.”

The man in the cell eyed Vetch with suspicion, then moved back to the farthest corner from the door and stood there, shoulders hunched, jamming the crust of bread into his mouth like a hungry rat. Vetch opened the cell door and put himself in the doorway between the prisoner and freedom, noting how the man’s eyes darted to his sword belt right away to confirm he was armed. The reek was even worse inside the cell than out. Vetch wrinkled his nose and nearly gagged as he used the toe of his boot to slide both the full waste bucket and the empty water bucket out of the cell.

“Go empty the waste bucket and find fresh water to fill the water bucket,” he ordered the oldster on guard. “I’ll have meals sent for the both of you when I’m done here. And take care not to mix those buckets up.”

“What, d’you think I’m stupid?” said the old man, scowling as he stooped to lift the buckets and depart to his task, grumbling all the while, “And don’t mix them up, he says. Takes a lot of brains to swing a sword, don’t it? ...”

Once they were alone, Vetch stepped into the cell. The two men eyed one another and Vetch could see the prisoner considering how quickly he could dart past Vetch. Vetch hooked his thumbs into his sword belt and shook his head.

“What’s your name?” he asked.

The scrawny man’s eyes darted all about the room and finally settled on Vetch’s face. He sighed. “Slouk.”

Vetch scoffed. “Right. Pull my other leg while you’re at it.”

“It is! That’s what people call me. S’only name I’ve got.”

“Okay, Slouk,” Vetch sniffed. “My name’s Vetch. I’m one of the last garrison soldiers this town’s got, after your friends attacked us and took about everything we had.”

“They weren’t my friends! I didn’t know them! Let me out of here!”

Again, Vetch shook his head. “I don’t believe you, Slouk. I think you know more about the raid than you’re letting on. And I think you know more about this woman who abducted our town’s mage. You’re going to tell me who the woman is, and where she and her army came from. Where would they be going back to?”

“I-I-I don’t know!” Slouk stuttered.

It was the flick of his eyes that gave his thoughts away before he acted. He rushed at Vetch and quickly tried to dart past him through the open cell door. But Vetch had been expecting it. He caught the man around his middle with both arms and pushed him backward. Slouk pounded at Vetch with closed fists; one of the blows caught Vetch glancingly on his stitched cheek and the wound stung enough to make his eyes water. Fortunately for Vetch, the man had not the muscle of a trained swordsman, as Vetch did, nor did he seemingly have the kind of fight left in him that he’d had the night he’d drunkenly brawled his way through the tavern. When Vetch shoved him backwards onto his pallet bed, the man wilted and sat there docilely.

He ran his fingers through his lank hair and moaned pitiably, “Why do you think I would know about any of that? Look at me! I’m a traveler who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and your people have done nothing but treat me like dirt. I should never have entered this damned town! I don’t know anything about The Lady, except what I told you already. Let me out of here. I’ve served my time and then some. Please.”

Vetch put fingers delicately to his cheek and then looked at them, glad to see them come away clean. So, the stitches at least had not been torn open. He looked down at Slouk. “Let you out? Last I checked, the tavern’s window still isn’t repaired. And now ...” He held his arms out wide in a gesture encompassing all. “Now, we’ve got an entire town to rebuild! So, you’re not getting out until you tell me everything you know about the attack and those who carried it out, because I know it’s more than you’re letting on. And if you don’t, then I’ll make sure you’re in here not just until the tavern’s window is repaired, but until every other last destroyed building in this entire town is rebuilt. I’ll give you some time to think hard on that and jog your memory.”

Vetch turned on his heel and strode out through the cell door. He slammed it shut behind him and turned the key in the lock.

“No! No, please! Wait!” Slouk launched himself at the door. He grabbed the bars and yanked on them fruitlessly, wailing, “Please! They have my sister! Please, wait ... they have my sister ...” he trailed off into sobs.

“Who has you sister?” Vetch pressed, staring the man down through the bars.

“The soldiers. The ones who were with The Lady when she took your mage.”

“Why do they have your sister? What for?”

“I ...”

“Out with it!” Vetch kicked the door and the man cringed back.

“Okay, okay ...” Slouk ran his grubby sleeves across his face and sniffled. After a moment, he seemed to gain control over himself again. He looked at Vetch through the bars with destitute eyes. “We’re thieves, my sister and me. Okay? Are you happy? We’re horse thieves.”

Vetch crossed his arms and took a breath. Now he was getting somewhere. If he could just get the man to open up and keep talking. In a calm voice, he asked, “You came here to steal a horse?”

Slouk shook his head. “No. To pay off a debt.”

“Explain.”

With a shaky sigh, Slouk turned and began pacing the cell—three steps one way, three steps the other—speaking as he did. “A job we had went wrong, and because of it my sis and I owe someone a lot of money. Money we don’t have. But word had been going around in our circles that this Lady was looking for people, and that she paid well.”

“What kind of people?” Vetch stepped closer to the bars and watched the man pace.

“I don’t know. Mercenaries. Soldiers. Anyone who could fight and ride.”

Vetch dug his fingers into his arms and spoke through gritted teeth. “So, you and all these sellswords took money from this woman to burn a town to the ground, and kill its people, and take everything from us that we made our lives with? To attack us and scatter our livestock and abduct our mage?” Vetch seethed within. It was fortunate for his prisoner that he was no longer standing in the cell with him, else he would have knocked the pathetic man flat right then and there.

“No! No, no, no, no! No attack, no attack!” Slouk screeched. “I never heard anything about an attack, about any of this. I didn’t know! It was only to steal the yaks. The prize yaks, that’s all they were after. That’s what they told me, nothing about a raid, I swear it. It was my job to come into town and count the soldiers. How many soldiers, how many guards, that’s all. So they could steal the animals. They held onto my sister and said they’d release her when I returned, and then they’d pay us enough to clear our debts.”

“Horseshit,” said Vetch. “You don’t gather that many armored swordsmen to steal livestock. Anyone could’ve seen that.”

“I swear. I never even saw all those soldiers until the same day you did.” Slouk returned to the cell door and gripped its bars, though he averted his eyes from Vetch’s now. “I don’t know what they meant to do to my sister if I didn’t return on time. They made ... threats. I need to find her. She’s the only family I’ve got. You have to let me go.”

Closing his eyes, Vetch turned inward for a moment, thinking. He felt a headache building and recalled then that he’d eaten nothing all day. Nor the day before. When he opened his eyes again, he found Slouk staring past him at the jail’s outer door. The next questions Vetch asked were the ones he had been building toward.

“Who is the woman who commanded the raid? What is her name? Where are she and her forces based?”

Slouk looked at Vetch with a face full of confusion. “I don’t know.”

“Then you can rot in there.” Vetch made to turn away.

“Wait! Wait, wait, wait!” pleaded Slouk. “I don’t know! I’m telling you the truth about that. I never spoke to her, only to one of her guards. A man with a long moustache, and I don’t know where he came from. I only met up with a group of them down the road from here. The soldiers would never say her name. They only ever called her The Lady. Always ‘The Lady wants this’ or ‘The Lady commands that’. But ...” He trailed off.

Vetch again moved close to the cell door. He watched his prisoner with hard eyes. There was more. The man knew something that could be of use. He’d use it to bargain. Well, let him, Vetch thought, so long as he got the information he wanted.

“What else?” Vetch prompted.

Slouk shook his head, mastering himself, almost seeming to stand up straighter now that he realized he had something of value to hold back. “If I tell you where you can find her, will you let me out of here?”

“Yes.”

“Do you promise.”

“I promise,” said Vetch.

The scrawny man swallowed and hesitated. Then, “There were other people like me in the group I met. Thieves, cutpurses, not proper soldiers like the ones you fought. They weren’t always so quiet about what they knew about her, like they were supposed to be. Well, some of ‘em were hired on a lot earlier than me, nearer to where The Lady came from. They described it. They said it was a rich place in the east. That she lorded over a big black-stoned castle there, all surrounded by wheat fields.”

“That’s it? No names, no town or city you could point to on a map? In our kingdom or another one?”

Slouk looked down and shook his head. “That’s all of what I heard. A black-stoned castle to the east, all surrounded by wheat fields. Will you let me go now?”

“Soon enough,” Vetch said. He left the jail and strode back out into the ruins of Moonfane Forge. He kept the keys to the cell with him, closing his ears off to the wails and pleadings of the prisoner left behind.