The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

“A black-stoned castle surrounded by wheat fields?” Ennric’s knit brow betrayed his doubt.

“That’s what he said,” replied Vetch through a mouthful of roasted yak’s meat. The butchers in town had not let any of the livestock killed in the raid go to waste, so at least Moonfane Forge did not have a scarcity of meat to go along with all its other problems. Vetch swallowed and could almost feel his strength and drive returning to him with each savory bite. “That ring any bells for you?”

The old soldier shook his head and leaned back in his chair. The two men sat once again at the little table on the shaded porch fronting Ennric’s house. Once again, Vetch was dressed in his black and silver uniform, Ennric in his regular townsman’s clothing. Vetch had been surprised to see Ennric so plainly clothed when he’d arrived to tell him everything their prisoner had claimed. For whatever reason, he felt as if wearing his uniform was keeping a part of what Moonfane Forge was to him alive. Perhaps it wasn’t the same for Ennric. Vetch watched as the veteran soldier mulled over everything he had been told.

“What do you hope to do?” Ennric asked at length. “Follow this Lady? Get revenge? She’s got an army, Vetch, and, according to this horse thief, is a mage herself. And I get the impression you believe him about that part.”

“I do,” answered Vetch. “That was the same arm motion we’ve seen Marigold perform all our lives. It was Barrier-Casting. The man had to have seen it to mimic it so perfectly.”

“So, then ... a mage with an army. I ask you again, what do you hope to do?”

“It’s our duty to protect Marigold, Ennric. That’s why Moonfane Forge even has a garrison. If she’s still alive ...” Vetch sighed and pushed his empty plate aside. “I don’t know. You’re right. A mage and war-ready soldiers.”

Ennric rested his elbow on the table and leaned in closer to fix his good eye on Vetch. “I understand, boy. You want to up and do something, because otherwise you feel powerless. What you don’t tend to think through when you’re young, though, is whether what you’re thinking of doing is smart or not. How it will turn out in practice.” He grunted and leaned back in his chair again, staring off at a view from his porch that had changed much in a few short days. “Spirits and demons both, look what this Lady did to us. It was never about the yaks, was it? Hell, even stealing the silver was probably secondary for them. They wanted Marigold. It was about getting the Barrier down, and they found a way to make it happen, so they could attack and snatch her in all the chaos. Damn them all!”

“They wanted Marigold, yes” Vetch agreed. “But then, if this Lady is a mage, too, why not bring down the Barrier herself? Why bring down the Barrier at all? She and her army could have attacked without horses and walked right through it in daytime—the very thing we were supposed to be able to defend against,” he added bitterly.

“Maybe they feared the battle would last until night, when they would’ve been trapped?”

“Maybe.” Vetch bowed his head and ran his fingers through his hair in frustration.

“And maybe this horse thief we have locked up is full of horse shit. Any of what he said could be true, or none of it could. Maybe ... maybe Marigold isn’t even alive anymore. That’s something we have to consider. Something much bigger happened that day than what a couple run-of-the-mill swordsmen are meant to fathom; the kind of thing mages get involved in. S’the way I see it, at least.”

Vetch sighed. “I’m not content to let it go simply on the guess that Marigold might be dead. We’d have to know for certain ourselves. But how? Where do we seek her? What’ve we got to go on? Practically nothing.” He pounded his fist on the table. “Fuck! We just don’t know enough. What the hell do we do?”

Ennric leaned over in order to place his hand on Vetch’s shoulder. At the same time, the front door opened and a young woman bearing a striking resemblance to Ennric’s wife cast in earlier years leaned out and leveled the two soldiers with a dark-eyed gaze.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Fine, daughter,” said Ennric

“I’m sure,” she said, and the sliver of sarcasm in her voice was reminiscent of her father. “Vetch, you want some more to eat? There’s plenty to go around,” she asked with a nod at Vetch’s cleaned plate.

“No, and my thanks, Eike.”

Ennric gave Vetch’s shoulder a couple gruff pats. “Let’s move this inside. It’s gettin’ cold out here, and we’ll need more chairs and plates for them, I’m sure.” He hitched his thumb at the street, indicating the group of uniformed garrison soldiers arriving with Neschi.

Neschi’s accounting of how many of Moonfane Forge’s garrison were still fit enough to fight was accurate to a soldier. Aside from her and Vetch, there were five total. Vetch had known their garrison had sustained terrible losses, but to see that all those left alive and uninjured could be seated around a single table was devastating in a way that left him feeling both cold and utterly disheartened. He took a seat at the kitchen table and watched his fellow soldiers do the same. They were all of them as battered from the battle as he was; he saw bruises, stitched gashes, and the telltale marks of blows deflected by their uniforms. Rolande had the knuckles of one hand heavily bandaged. Mora’s uniform showed signs of having been scorched by fire, and she walked with a slight but noticeable limp. Oderyk appeared to have come through unscathed; on the outside, at least. Vetch could see a different kind of injury in the man’s eyes—he had lost his wife in the raid. Vetch wondered if his own eyes appeared as lifeless. All of them had been hurt in the battle, but these few were still capable of lifting a sword. Too few, Vetch knew, for what he had planned.

“Ennric, what’re we here for?” Renzo asked in his typically surly way. The sandy-haired man appeared too restless to sit. He leaned against the kitchen block with arms crossed. Vetch had never been able to befriend the man, nor knew anyone who had, but he knew him to be a hell of a fighter. He had no injuries that Vetch could see, but the hem of his uniform and one sleeve of it were stiff with dried blood. Ennric’s daughter had taken one look at the man and moved away from him to go and stand behind her father. Even those used to soldiers tended to feel uneasy around Renzo.

“Don’t ask me,” said Ennric, uncorking a bottle of something stronger than ale or wine. He took a swig from it and then passed it to Mora beside him who did the same. “Vetch is the one who’s been doing the legwork.”

All eyes turned to Vetch, making him unconsciously sit up straighter in his chair. He was used to this, or at least he had been. Other soldiers tended to look to him, so how come all of a sudden he felt as if the plan he’d been so firm on that morning was now the worst possible idea? There was nothing like nearly being killed in battle to shake a man’s confidence. He hadn’t even survived by his own skill. He’d simply been lucky.

“Vetch,” Ennric prompted. “Tell them about what we were discussing. About the horse thief and Marigold.”

“What about Marigold?” Iannitz asked quietly. He sniffed at the bottle passed to him and pushed it over to Rolande without taking a drink.

Vetch took a breath and settled into the matter-of-fact voice he used when discussing swordplay or battle tactics. “For those of you who hadn’t heard yet, Mage Marigold was taken during the raid. Ennric and me think the entire attack might have been only a ploy to get at her. We’ve a horse thief locked up in the jail who saw another mage come with soldiers and take her.” Vetch paused and met the eyes of the other soldiers around the table. He read doubt on some faces, intrigue on others. The bottle came around to him. He took a swig, then winced at the harsh burn that scoured the back of his throat. Handing the bottle back to Ennric, he cleared his throat and spoke on. “I have a lead on the direction by which they fled with her, and a description of the place they’re supposedly going.” He let the statement hang for a few seconds, hesitant to say what he was thinking to do with the information. When no one else volunteered their thoughts, he forged on. “It’s our job to protect her. If she’s still alive ...”

“You’re thinking we go after her?” asked Rolande skeptically. She rubbed her bandaged knuckles and shook her head, setting her short brown hair to swishing like a theater curtain being drawn closed. “We’d be killed.”

“It’s always been the mission of our garrison,” said Vetch. “We should have protected her in the first place. And Moonfane with her. Are we even soldiers anymore if we abandon her to her fate?”

“What about everyone else here?” Oderyk asked. His voice was deep but strangely soft for such a tall and muscled man. He was closer in age to Ennric than to any of the other able-bodied soldiers at the table. But he appeared to have aged years in the short time following the battle, his salt-and-pepper hair and beard more gray than black now. “There are townsfolk who’ve resolved to stay here and try to rebuild. It’s our job to protect them, too.”

“It’s not as if we could stand up to a second attack,” Neschi said. “What good could we do here anymore?”

“Regardless,” said Oderyk. “There’s more than our mage to consider. What about help for Moonfane?”

Across the table from him, Ennric nodded. “He makes a good point. If any of the heads of the Silversmith’s Council were left alive, they’d have been organizing that already by now, wouldn’t they? Word of the attack needs to be sent to the King’s Capital City, and to the king himself. He could send aid and soldiers back. Maybe even someone there would know who this ‘raven-haired’ bitch the horse thief described is. The royal garrison could be sent to run her down then. We should organize a retinue to go to the king and petition him for help. He’ll listen. Moonfane Forge has always provided well for the kingdom with our goods. Hell, I’d wager it’s probably a Moonfane yak’s hair that stuffs the cushion his royal ass sits on all day.”

The mild laughter around the table eased the tension in the room somewhat, but Vetch couldn’t muster even a chuckle.

“That’s the correct and wise plan,” he said into the ensuing quiet. “For our town and townsfolk, or what’s left of them. It just doesn’t feel right not doing what we were pledged to do in the first place by chasing this Lady and her guard down ourselves right now and getting Marigold back.”

“No. It doesn’t. I never said going to the king was a plan to make any of us feel better,” Ennric said sternly. “If it were up to me, and I were able, I’d much rather mount up right fuckin’ now, hunt this other mage down, and ram a sword right down her spellcastin’ throat. If it were me in charge. But, thankfully, it’s not. Because that’d be a dumb thing to do, much as I know all of us here want to.”

“Who is in charge?” Iannitz asked timidly. All eyes at the table turned to him. The young man had joined the garrison a couple years after Vetch had. He was a serviceable swordsman, but in Vetch’s estimation lacked the kind of instinct that kept a man alive in a real fight. Perhaps he would grow into it. It seemed to Vetch that it was fortunate fate had seen to it he’d not been able to participate in the battle; he’d have the chance to grow into being a soldier now, and perhaps be ready for a next time. “What I’m saying,” Iannitz went on slowly, “is, who decides what any of us do now? With Captain Tarese dead and those next in rank dead, too. Who’s even in charge? Of us or the town?”

Silence met this line of inquiry, as around the table the soldiers all considered their own thoughts on the matter. It complicated things. As Vetch himself had pondered that very morning, what was even stopping any of them from simply leaving Moonfane Forge and not looking back, from starting anew somewhere else? What now chained any of them to their town or duty?

“The royal garrison at the capital will choose a new captain,” said Ennric finally. “Or send one from their ranks to take over the post.”

“They won’t know who to choose any better than we do,” Neschi said pragmatically. “I say we make Vetch captain. Everyone already listens to him.”

“No,” said Vetch.

“Why not? It’ll take forever for anyone we send to reach the capital. Who else thinks Vetch should be captain?” She lifted her hand as she fixed Vetch with a playfully smug look.

Before Vetch could even voice an argument, Iannitz raised his hand. “Vetch. Yeah. I say Vetch, too.”

In his wake, the others around the table voiced the same.

“There,” said Neschi. “That’s off the table then. Captain Vetch.”

“No,” he said again and shook his head. “The royal garrison should name the new captain.”

Beside Vetch, Ennric cuffed his arm. “Captain Vetch,” he echoed. “It’s decided, boy, so you may as well start livin’ up to it.”

Vetch pinched the bridge of his nose. He took in one breath, then breathed it out. “Acting captain, then,” he said. “I’ll accept the position of acting captain, until either that’s officially confirmed or someone else is named properly.”

“Acting Captain Vetch,” Ennric declared and took a swig off the bottle. “So ... Acting Captain Vetch, as it appears we’re the only ones left who can make decisions for Moonfane Forge, what’s the orders? What’s our next move?”

It was no strange thing for Vetch to have the eyes of his fellow soldiers on him, awaiting his advice or opinions. But never had his words been sacrosanct. They had always stood only as a temporary buffer until one of the higher ranked soldiers, or Captain Tarese herself, arrived to confirm or veto his choice. It was about as much self-governance as rank-and-file soldiers could exert when required, no matter who they looked to in a pinch. That had always made it easy to dole out orders, the knowing that someone with more experience had the final say if he was wrong. Without that now, Vetch felt the true weight of command for the first time. Most of the men and women sitting around the table had more experience than he did, but his was the final say now. If he made the wrong decision, the penalty would be paid with lives.

He swept his hair out of his eyes and felt the short crescent line of stitches over his right cheekbone. “Ennric’s right,” he said, thinking through his orders even as he voiced them. “Moonfane Forge needs aid—workers, soldiers, coin, building materials. We’ll send a retinue to the King’s Capital City with news of the attack and a petition for their help. They need to know, at the least. We can send representatives of all the districts, townspeople who can speak for all of us in the royal court, along with some guards, livestock, and what little coin we can raise. There are plenty of other villages and towns along the way who may be persuaded to send workers and supplies up here for the right payment. In that way, we might have help getting started rebuilding here even before our retinue reaches the capital.”

Around the table, heads nodded in agreement.

“A wise plan, boy,” said Ennric.

“It’s your plan; I’m only using it,” Vetch said in reply, and in his next breath heard himself say, “And it’s why I’m putting you in charge of it.”

Ennric’s answer to that was only to subtly raise his bushy gray brows.

“Vetch ...” Ennric’s daughter Eike spoke for the first time. She had until then stood quietly behind her father during the meeting, listening with avidity, but not daring to butt in on the soldiers’s talk until now. “He’s in no condition to travel that far. Look at his arm.”

“I’ll be fine, daughter,” Ennric said and reached up to pat Eike’s hand where it rested on his shoulder. “You and your mother would only get sick of me tottering around here with this useless arm before too long. It’ll give me something to do. I was years younger than you the last time I got to see the capital.”

Eike looked down at her father with pinched lips, then turned her eyes imploringly to Vetch.

“He’s the best man for the job, Eike,” he reassured her. To Ennric, he added, “Can you do all that, old man, gather up the right people, a few carts, whatever supplies you need to get there, and make the trip? You’ll effectively be Moonfane Forge’s representative.”

“Mm,” grunted Ennric, before adding, “I don’t know a damned thing about court protocol, but I’ll find people who do and get them there safe.”

“Make whatever promises you need to,” said Vetch. “Yaks, mining permissions, trade agreements—whatever it takes, we’ll back it up. The sooner our people here are protected and able to get back to their normal lives, the better.”

“How is anyone going to get back to their normal lives after this?” Eike said softly, and then cast her eyes down as if she’d not meant to voice the question aloud. Nobody had an answer for her.

“And us, Cap’n Vetch?” asked Neschi plainly. “What’s our orders?”

Vetch pushed his chair back from the table and stood. “We are going after this ‘raven-haired’ Lady and getting Mage Marigold back. So, gather your supplies, sharpen your swords, and be prepared to ride in two days. Dismissed.”

As the soldiers stood and went to carry out his orders, Vetch saw that some of them smiled, while others looked grim. He ignored both reactions. They were soldiers of Moonfane Forge. If they still considered themselves that, then they knew they still had a job to do, and they’d be ready to do it.”

Once the others had left, Vetch and Ennric walked back out onto the porch to lean on the railing and look out across their town in all of its tragic ruin.

“I’m surprised,” said Vetch quietly. “I’d’ve figured you’d be the first one back in your uniform and insisting to me that you were going with us after these people, busted arm and all.”

For a long time Ennric was quiet, staring straight ahead, and it was only by the way he gripped the porch rail so tightly that Vetch could see he was wrestling with his thoughts.

“This soldier’s fighting days are done,” Ennric said at length, in a voice low and full of emotion. “Hear me? That’s the truth of it. And, now I’ve said it, I can stick to it.” The veteran stood for a time, eyes level, jaw set. Yet, when he spoke again, there was a slight trembling in his gray-whiskered chin. “It doesn’t happen the way you expect it to, you know? At your age, you think it will. You think your last time soldiering will come either when you fall in battle, or when peace has finally been won and you retire fat and comfortable to a little farm with your blade hanging over the mantle. But that’s never the way it goes. I saw it happen to the old ‘uns in my time, and so I can recognize it now. You just wake up one day and realize that the last time you drew your blade ... will forever be the last time. Not because you want it that way, but because your body is done with it all, and if you ever went and drew it again, your body wouldn’t be up to the task of keepin’ you alive. The fighting goes on, but not for me.” He turned to Vetch then and gave a half shrug.

It was hard to meet the older soldier’s steely eyes in that moment, so Vetch put on a mollifying smile and clapped Ennric on the back, telling him, “How ‘bout you wait until that arm heals before talking like that. Nobody feels themself when they’re down and out. You’ll heal up, old man.” Ennric’s reply came in the form of a stolid grunt. Vetch turned the subject. “You’ll be able to make what preparations you need and make it to the capital for us? I didn’t hang too much on you in front of everyone?”

Ennric turned his eye back on Vetch then and there was at least still a sliver of the man’s gruff nature in his expression. He chuckled. “No. No, I’ll get it all done. The king’ll see our plight, don’t you doubt it. And if he doesn’t at first, then I’ll find a way to make ‘im.”

To that, Vetch smiled and found that he felt reassured by his mentor’s reemerging attitude. “Then I’ll leave you to it,” he said, and nodded to Ennric, but before he was down the porch steps to the street, Ennric made a short whistle to get his attention.

Fixing Vetch with a hard stare, he said, “Vetch, there are plans that are the smart ones, and then there are those that are the right ones. A good captain knows when to order the smart plan, and when to take on the burden of the right plan. You’ll make a fine captain, boy.”

Without saddling Vetch with the time or obligation to have to answer to that, the old soldier simply smiled at him and then went back inside.