The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

*

As the hours of riding slowly through tangled and overgrown forest stretched on, Vetch couldn’t help feeling that, in a fashion, he and his fellow soldiers were only running away from their problems by departing Moonfane Forge. As much as he was determined to think about nothing but what lay ahead of him, he still wondered if they’d not be doing more good by staying and helping the townsfolk. Yet, that course of thought always brought him back around to the same conclusion, that there was really no good a small handful of soldiers could do there. They were not heads of town, they were not planners. The oldster who’d been guarding their prisoner had not been wrong about it taking little thought to swing a sword. Moonfane Forge didn’t need soldiers and swords right now. If Vetch and his compatriots were mere sword-swingers, then let them turn that skill toward enemies worthy of receiving the sharp ends. Tracking down the raiders is where they would do the most good, should they succeed.

Vetch ran his fingers through his hair and then scratched at his three-days-grown whiskers. He had never imagined that having command meant doubting and second-guessing every decision he made. Yet, here he was again, convinced he was making the best decision in the circumstances presented to him, and still feeling no better about it all. He brought up the rear of their little procession, keeping an eye on Slouk, who rode sullenly before him. Well ahead, Neschi was leading the way along the narrow woodcutters’s track they followed, scouting and blazing their trail. Rolande and Mora rode close together, studying a map of the region that one of them had procured from the Silversmith’s District Archives. Near them, stoic Oderyk sat atop his tall horse like a statue, appearing to Vetch as if he, too, meditated upon their situation.

“Hey! Thief!” Renzo called from their flank. The stocky brawler turned his mount back to the trail, crunching his way toward them through the undergrowth. He had taken it upon himself to look for signs of the raiders’s passing off the clear track. “You claimed this Lady had personal guards. How many? How many other regulars accompanied her?”

Slouk’s head rolled up on his neck to peer at Renzo. When he didn’t answer, Renzo brought his horse in close to Slouk’s and, without warning, cuffed the scrawny man hard across the face.

“Answer, thief!”

“Hey, there’s no call for that!” protested Iannitz. The youngest soldier of their group had been riding close to Slouk all day, tasked with keeping an eye on him, but mostly the job had boiled down to listening to him complain under his breath for hours on end.

Slouk yelped and shielded his face. “I don’t know, damn you! I wasn’t with her. I was only swept up in this all by acci—” His words became a stunted squawk of fear as Renzo raised his fist again.

“Enough,” barked Vetch. Renzo lowered his fist, but persisted in glaring at the cowering horse thief. The command drew the attention of the other soldiers riding ahead of them.

Iannitz reined his horse back to draw in close to Vetch. “Captain, what’s the point of treating the man like that? He’s told us what he knows.”

“He hasn’t,” asserted Renzo, though he chose not to elaborate.

Vetch made a placating gesture with his hand at Iannitz. “He’s lied before, soldier. He already admitted to being a party to the raid. Don’t let him fool you into believing otherwise. Slouk, answer the question.”

Slouching in his saddle, Slouk kept his eyes on Renzo, wary of another strike as he mumbled, “Five guards, maybe. No more than six.”

“What about other soldiers?” Renzo persisted.

Slouk shook his head. “How should I know? There were soldiers all around that day.”

“Renzo, what’re you getting at?” Vetch asked.

Renzo’s jaw moved as if he were chewing something. “Signs of rough camping well out from the track. But they’re old. Could be people who waited to rejoin the Lady after the raid.”

“Or it could be woodcutters, or mushroom gatherers, or any other unrelated people who came through here,” Iannitz said, though he sounded unsure of his own theory.

Rolande looked up from her map-studying to speak up. “Woodcutters and mushroom gatherers camp on the road, if they spend the night out at all. These woods are dangerous.”

“Then, what does it mean?” asked Iannitz, looking from one fellow soldier to another. Throughout this exchange, Slouk kept his head down, though it was clear he was listening in on every word.

Renzo scoffed, kicked his horse into a trot, and left them to move off into the brush again.

“It means,” Vetch said, “that we could be facing a larger force than a couple carriages would indicate.” He tried to make the words sound as if this wasn’t so much a concern as it was an added detail. He didn’t want anyone else to begin second-guessing their mission, as he had been doing all morning. It was one thing to prepare for and set off on a quest; quite another thing to stick to it as the hours and days wore on, and un-presaged elements began rearing their ugly heads.

Well up ahead, Neschi dismounted and waved her hand to gain his attention. Vetch nudged his gelding to a quicker pace. “Watch him,” he ordered Iannitz, indicating Slouk.

“I don’t know how many soldiers. Never saw ‘em. Maybe it is just woodcutters,” Slouk whined, either to himself or Iannitz as Vetch left them.

Vetch passed the other soldiers on the track and they fell in behind him, eager to see what Neschi had discovered. What had been a woodcutter’s trail, broad enough for two horses to go abreast, widened out into a proper road, though it was ill-kept, and grown-over at its edges. Bannerman’s Wood, as Vetch understood it, had been more commonly traveled in days of yore, but its roads had fallen out of use before his lifetime, owing to safer roads being made that skirted around the dense wood. Even when the forest had been more trafficked, it had never been considered particularly safe, being home to large predators, bands of thieves, and less knowable creatures and devils. Or, so it was said. Few traveled the wood these days; even fewer resided in them. The place was dark, foreboding, and its flora seemed to grow unnaturally fast. Not the kind of place anyone would choose to trek through for any length of time. Not unless they were trying to disguise their tracks.

When he reached Neschi, Vetch noted right away what had caught her attention. She pointed out the signs while he dismounted.

“Look at these, Cap’n,” she nodded at the dirt road where a clear trail of new carriage wheel ruts marked The Lady’s passage. While this was no new thing—they had after all been following the carriage wheel tracks all the way from Moonfane Forge’s East Gate and through the forest—it was the signs off the road that were noteworthy. Vetch swept his gaze over the large, open area beside the road where Neschi now stood.

“It’s been completely cleared out,” he said. The dense undergrowth had been unmistakably cleared away, while above their heads low tree branches had been cut to allow for the height of the carriages. Upon closer inspection, Vetch could even spot signs of a camp having been made there, though someone had made an attempt at deliberately clearing away all evidence. There was little left now save some scorch marks in the dirt where a fire had been, and more wheel ruts, but the tale those told was clear.

“See it?” Neschi asked. By then, the other soldiers and Slouk had gathered around to look upon the scene.

Vetch nodded. “At least two carriages passed by here. You can see the trail that we’ve been following goes straight through. But there was another carriage or wagon waiting for them here. Maybe two. Those tracks join the original ones.”

“Look at this, Vetch,” called Rolande. “More limbs cut from above the road.”

“Those are recent cuts,” said Oderyk. It was the first the man had spoken all day. “But older than the ones above the cleared spot.”

“They’d been preparing this,” Vetch said quietly. “They probably arrived to Moonfane by this route, as well. They’d already made sure there would be clear passage for the carriages, the ones they knew would be carrying The Lady away ... with our Marigold.”

“Hells ...” whispered Mora. “How did word never reach us? Someone must have seen this army, or had word of a plot.”

“Someone did.” Renzo practically growled the words as he pulled Slouk roughly down from his horse. “What say you, thief? Were you one of the whoresons out here with a saw laying out the red carpet for your Lady and her killers?”

Slouk wailed, but said nothing, only shook his head emphatically and threw up his hands. Vetch met Renzo’s eyes and the soldier released the thief. Standing with hands on hips, Vetch looked back up at the cut limbs. He realized how dim it was getting out. He needed time to think about what this new evidence would mean for them. He also wanted to question Slouk further. But later. Away from Renzo’s heavy-handedness. Vetch felt the other soldiers’s eyes on him. They’d always looked to him, even before they had called him captain. They wanted to see what he would do or say now, how he would guide them, what tone he would set.

“It’s getting dark,” he said. “They’ve gifted us a campsite, so we might as well take advantage. Certainly, they won’t be traveling quickly through this tangle, so we don’t need to rush in. We should be rested for when we meet them.”

“And the sorrier they’ll be for it,” Oderyk stated darkly.

Vetch nodded grimly. “Oderyk, Rolande, Neschi, set up camp. Mora, you have the horses. Renzo, take a tour around and see that there’s nothing in the immediate area that poses us any threat, then you and I will be on first watch. Iannitz, get us a fire started and some food cooked up. Something hot and hearty. It was a good day today, soldiers, so finish these tasks and then take your ease. We’re one day closer to winning back our mage.”

It wasn’t a cheer that followed his words. Vetch didn’t expect anything of the sort, given their situation. But the uniform “yes, Captain” that answered him, and how his soldiers jumped to their tasks, was a great encouragement. It would suffice for his first real day in command.

Only when all the other soldiers had set about their work did Slouk speak. The man had been standing in the road with such a kicked-puppy posture that Vetch had nearly forgotten he was there at all.

“What of me?” he asked in a small voice.

“Help Iannitz with the fire,” Vetch decided. “Then you can rest beside it until we eat. Don’t stray from it. If you have to piss or shit, you let me know first and then someone always goes with you. Clear?”

The man nodded meekly and went to his task.

Night deepened even faster in the dark forest than it did underneath the shadow of Mt. Moonfane. Vetch almost regretted taking first watch upon sitting down and discovering how utterly exhausted he was. But, then, he’d been through many shifts of watch duty on little sleep over the years, so it was nothing new to him. Now, more than ever, it was important that his soldiers saw that he could put their respite ahead of his own. They spoke little as they ate, clearly as tired as he was, but none of them complained about anything. Another good sign for the first day on the trail. Vetch hardly marked the passage of time from when he finished his meal to when the shift in shadows across the moon-speckled road told him that it was time to wake Oderyk and Neschi for the second watch. In that time, he’d seen nothing of concern and had heard only strange, distant animal calls from deeper in the woods. He fell deeply asleep within seconds of wrapping himself in his blankets and closing his eyes.

The next morning, Slouk and his horse were gone.