The Maiden of Moonfane Forge

*

Neschi’s and Iannitz’s horses were the next two to die. Iannitz paced inconsolably up and down the road with a stricken look on his paled face. Mora was on her knees beside her dying mount, futilely rummaging through a bag of medicines for any sort of remedy. Oderyk’s horse was in a similar state, but, pragmatically, he had already given the animal up for dead and was busy emptying its saddlebags, even as it seized and struggled to draw breath. Renzo and Neschi also were consolidating their supplies, separating which things they would all need from which they could do without. Out of all the horses, Vetch’s and Rolande’s were the least affected. Both were still standing, though their haunches shook and they swayed on their hooves. Perhaps those two might be saved.

Vetch pulled the saddle and saddlebags from his gelding and let them fall to the ground. He looked up the road in the direction they’d been heading, then back in the direction they’d come from. Slouk had stolen enough of their water that they would need to return to the little stream to fill what containers that remained to them. That meant walking back. He could split his group of soldiers in half, have some stay here and watch over the two horses who might recover, while the others went back for the water. He calculated these things in his head—how much time it would take, how many days it would rob them of their pursuit. That was, if they chose to continue on. If who chose? he thought to himself. It was his command to give, was it not? And would it not be a suicide mission to carry on? There’d be no way to even catch the raiders now. Even two healthy horses could not transport seven soldiers and all their supplies. They could abandon the horses and walk, but again, they’d be giving up speed and the ability to carry most of the supplies they’d brought. What choice was there left but to abandon Marigold and return to Moonfane Forge?

Perceiving that as the only option remaining to him, Vetch could feel a toxin breeding within him. It was bad enough to lose Marigold, but it also meant losing his chance at revenge. He had felt his desire for it growing every day since the attack. It was a poison that accumulated and steered his actions, and if it could not be purged by facing the attack’s perpetrators, it would overwhelm and drown him. He was not proud of it, that his want for vengeance had begun to overshadow his mission to recover Marigold. But it was true. He was also fearful of how his fellow soldiers would see him if he robbed them, also, of their hope for retribution by ordering their retreat.

Again, he looked up the road, and then down it. He could go neither way.

Oderyk stood and dusted off his pants. “At least the thief chose only to poison our animals and not us,” he observed, as if fishing for some silver lining.

“Inspect all of our food supplies carefully before anyone eats anything else, to be safe.” Vetch heard his voice giving the orders automatically, as if it were someone else taking charge for him. But it was not someone else. Orders had to be issued, and command had to be taken, so it fell to him and he did it. “We should empty all the water skins out and return to the stream to refill them, as well.” Before the grumbling of the other soldiers became too loud, he added, “I know, I know. It could be that Slouk never touched our own food and water. But we can’t be certain. We need to get more water to replace what he took from us either way, so rather than waste time complaining about it, let’s hurry up and do it. Bring the horses who are still standing, leave the others—I’m sorry, Mora.”

There. He told himself he was not being cowardly by delaying giving the order that they would abandon their mission and retreat home, merely that he was choosing to wait so his soldiers would be focused only on the next task at hand. Once they knew their supplies were safe and sufficient to see them out of the forest again, he would broach the rest.

Up the road a way, Iannitz turned to rejoin the group and prepare to move. A sharp hissing sound cut through the air to be was followed immediately by a solid thwack. The young soldier made a sound as if he’d been punched in the gut and, with a grimace of fear, turned back around again to look up the road in confusion. The shaft of an arrow stuck out of his upper back. Before he knew what had happened, two more arrows punctured his chest. He let out a panicked yelp and stumbled to his hands and knees, trying to crawl away. The first raider crashed out of the trees on his horse and cut Iannitz down with his sword from the saddle. Suddenly, the woodland exploded with war cries and pounding hooves as the rest of the small band of raiders broke from their cover and fell upon Vetch and his garrison soldiers.

The shock of the surprise attack made it impossible to wonder how this group of raiders had doubled back and stolen upon them so swiftly. There was only the ingrained, instinctual reaction left to a soldier: fight. Vetch whipped his blade from its scabbard and ducked a sword cut, as another raider bypassed him and charged down Mora. Her sword thrust was not enough to penetrate the raider’s armor as they followed through and caught her a blow to the head with their mace. Fights broke out around Vetch. Neschi, Oderyk, and Renzo had all managed to draw their weapons quickly enough to repel the first strikes at them.

“Into the trees!” Vetch yelled, sickened as he leapt over Mora’s body to heed his own command.

His heart pounded in his throat and a roaring filled his ears. Adrenaline made his body tremble even as he marshalled his muscles to action. He swept behind the trunk of a tree just before a raider’s axe edge shaved bark off where his head had been. Stepping quickly around the other side of the tree, he put himself behind the mounted raider and surged forward with his sword, catching her with a stab to the thigh. She growled in pain and reined her horse back out of Vetch’s reach, in the same motion jumping down from the saddle to face him on level ground. She hefted her axe, showing him a rictus grin from out of her feather-topped helm. She attacked without hesitation, pressing forward on Vetch with testing axe swings. Vetch had the advantage in height and the reach of his blade, but the raider’s ferocity demanded his complete attention. It was the same as he’d seen back in Moonfane Forge. Whoever these fighters were, they were experienced and relentless and they would kill him without hesitation if he made even a single mistake.

Twice, she came forward with jabbing motions meant to test and taunt Vetch’s ability to deflect them, and twice Vetch turned them aside. The third time, he stepped in and brought his blade down in a cut across her arm that made her drop her axe and clutch at the bleeding wound. He had her dead to rights now, or so he thought. In the next moment, a horse trying to avoid the chaos slammed into his back, knocking him to the ground. His foe had drawn a dagger. Seeing her opening, she pounced forward. Then, yet again, the pendulum of advantage swung back in the other direction as an arrow took her in the ribs. Vetch looked across the road in time to see Rolande nock a second arrow and fire, hitting the raider in the hip, in a soft spot between two panels of leather armor. Vetch kicked the woman’s legs out from under her and she went down hard with a muffled grunt, rolling and clutching at the arrow shafts.

Vetch was up on his feet again in an instant, tossing his head to get his hair out of his eyes as he raised his blade, ready for whoever would come next. To his surprise, he faced no second attacker bearing down on him. Rolande had dropped her bow and was engaged in a hand-to-hand struggle with a raider, the pair of them falling to the ground, rolling in the dirt and over thorny brush, fighting dagger against fists. Elsewhere, the other soldiers had followed Vetch’s command and retreated into the trees where the raiders would be forced to dismount. Riderless horses shifted and danced between the various struggles, wide-eyed yet trained not to bolt. Vetch had but a moment in which to assess the situation around him, but saw clearly that they were outnumbered. Already, Oderyk fended off two attackers with his longsword, while they sought to wear the older man down. He couldn’t see Neschi or Renzo, but could hear the grunts and growls and pings of steel on steel from the fights they must be engaged in. How had these attackers fallen upon them like this? Had The Lady anticipated everything they would do and left her people to set an ambush in response?

The sound of a new horse’s approach alerted Vetch to another raider arriving on the scene. He looked up, and in the dwindling light of the red setting sun, saw a face he recognized. The raider with the long black hair, crooked nose, and tendrilled moustache cast his eyes around as if only mildly interested in the battle that was taking place before him. He stopped his horse and dismounted beside Iannitz’s body. Almost as if it were an afterthought, he drew his sword and stabbed it perfunctorily into Iannitz’s still form.

Witnessing that caused something to break in Vetch then. His blood boiled in his veins and he lost sight of everything else around him. It was at this moment that the commander of the raiders chanced to look up and meet eyes with him. Whether there was recognition in that stare or not, Vetch failed to note. He charged forward with his sword held high, a wordless shout of rage breaching from his lungs.

The mustachioed raider countered his first downswing with a practiced deflection that left pain briefly shooting up through Vetch’s arm from the jolt of clashing steel. Vetch ignored it and brought his blade back in a return cut. He was quick enough to catch the raider by surprise, for the man had no deflecting counter ready the second time. Instead, he jumped back to avoid Vetch’s return swing and nearly stumbled when he backed into his own horse. Vetch went to press another attack, but caught himself and stopped just short when he saw the raider recover his stance surprisingly fast and level his blade at him.

Both men eyed one another and Vetch got his first good look at this raider commander. He was tall and wiry, but the fit of his boiled leather armor betrayed steely muscle underneath. His weathered and pocked face did not disguise the hard, angular features of a northerner, his dark northerner’s eyes squinting against the sun, appraising Vetch from within the shade of his helm.

“Where is The Lady taking Marigold?” Vetch demanded.

For a moment, the raider only regarded Vetch with the slightest lift of his brows. Then, he chuckled and shook his head. The amusement in his deep voice mocked Vetch, and set his teeth to grinding.

“Answer me!” he bellowed, raising his sword. Around them, fighting was still going on, but it sounded distant and muffled. Vetch couldn’t take his attention off his adversary. His ears still managed to catch the sound of Neschi fighting hard somewhere in the trees, her voice in the struggle recalling him to the day of the attack, when he’d stood back-to-back with her, the both of them wreathed around with flames and smoke and raiders, waiting for the icy cut of death’s scythe. The same day the man he now faced had stood over him and regarded him as no more than a bit of mud to be scraped off his boot sole.

All this flashed through Vetch’s mind as, even now, this raider would not even deign to speak to him. The amusement on the raider’s face disappeared, to be replaced once more with that same cold detachment. He gave his horse a slap on the rump to send the animal out of their way and then, standing there in the center of the road, he adopted a swordsman’s stance and waited for Vetch to come.

And Vetch did. With all the rage and heat of emotion that had built and built inside of him for days on end, he charged in again. Their swords clashed and scraped, they jockeyed for position, testing each other with thrusts and slices at arm’s length. Vetch’s swings were forceful, carrying his anger behind them. He knocked the raider’s blade aside and in the same motion crashed his shoulder into the man’s chest, hearing the grunt driven from the raider’s lungs by the blow. Too close in to drive his blade home, Vetch instead grabbed for the man’s sword arm with his free hand and used the hilt of his sword in a vicious back-strike to pound his ribs, satisfied to feel how solidly it impacted the raider’s stomach through his armor.

His adversary, though, proved to be versed in both classic swordplay and the kind of ugly, brutal combat that kept a man alive in real fight. Vetch had expected nothing less, having faced these raiders before in Moonfane Forge, and felt ready for them now. But he was not prepared for the knee lifted sharply into his gut. The air went out of him and he staggered back as the raider shoved him onto his back and then brought his sword swinging down. Vetch rolled out of the way and the blade’s tip cut into the dirt. He popped back up to his feet and disguised the agony he felt from the blow with a series of practiced stabs and feint cuts to push his opponent back. In seconds, Vetch found his breath again, parried an overhead swing, countered, and was rewarded to land a cut of his own through the raider’s leather armor up near his armpit. The man grunted and stepped back, hunching his shoulders to hide the wound and positioning his blade low. Vetch recognized the stance and anticipated the raider’s next move—he’d try to rush in under Vetch’s defense and stab upward. The muscles in Vetch’s arms and legs tensed like steel, coiled to strike.

The raider sprang forward and went for just the rising stab Vetch had expected, the blade aimed to shove up under his sternum. And Vetch countered it, sidestepping and putting all his strength into a downward swing meant to cleave the man’s arms off at the elbows. But Vetch’s blade impacted nothing. The raider commander’s upward thrust was a feint. The very moment Vetch lifted his arms and committed, the raider halted his own motion and danced backward. Vetch’s blade sliced only air and rebounded off the ground. His momentum overbalanced him and carried him forward, his hair falling into his eyes and obscuring his vision. Before he could even register his surprise and recover, the raider lifted his sword in a continuation of his dodge and brought it down. The blade punched through Vetch’s uniform and bit deep into the flesh between neck and shoulder on his sword arm. He cried out in pain and dropped his blade. Relentlessly, the raider followed up by smashing the cross hilt of his sword into Vetch’s face. Vetch felt hot blood explode from his nose and pour down his chin. His vision warred between dark splotches and dancing lights. He didn’t even realize he was falling until the back of his head impacted the earth.

The raider callously stepped over him then, and Vetch understood he was no longer deemed a threat, not even worthy enough to be finished off. The raider with the moustache merely discarded him there in the dirt and went to aid his fellows.

Lying there on the road, Vetch teetered between consciousness and blackout. The sounds of fighting were dwindling, drowned out by those of him gagging on his own blood. He could not hear Neschi anymore, but he thought he recognized Renzo’s voice. The man was laughing. Laughing! Well, he’d always loved a good fight, hadn’t he? Perhaps he was having a better go of it than Vetch had. But then the laughing stopped, and Vetch could not tell if the battle had concluded or if he had merely lost consciousness.

Overhead, the dark boughs of the trees swayed gently in a rising evening breeze. Birds flew over, black shapes cutting across a twilit sky. The ground felt chill against his back. There were snippets of conversation now, along with footsteps and horses being led about.

“Murzagis—”

“—be quick about it ... catch up with—”

“That one is—”

The taste of blood dominated Vetch’s senses, but more sounds made themselves apparent—saddlebags being rifled through, things being dumped out on the road. A horse screamed, then there was a heavy thump. Footsteps approached. Through slitted eyes, Vetch saw the commanding raider come into view standing over him. The man had removed his helm, his long black hair unbound and falling about his shoulders.

With a command of, “We go now!” he ordered his people back to their horses. Then he looked down at Vetch. Matter-of-factly, he turned his sword over in his grip and stabbed it down through Vetch’s chest. It went straight through him into the earth, then was yanked cleanly back out. Vetch hadn’t even the strength to voice his shock and pain. It was cold, yet searing, radiating quickly throughout him. The raider wiped his blade and re-sheathed it, sparing Vetch not even a second glance before returning to his own mount. Vetch listened as the raiders mounted up, turned their horses up the road, and trotted away.

Blood soaked through his clothes, hot at first, but soon cooling and making him cold. His hair, teased by the wind, tickled his eyelashes, making him want to brush it away, but he couldn’t muster the strength to lift his arms. His fingertips and toes began to tingle.

So, this is how I will die, he thought to himself. What a waste. What had he accomplished? He had been a soldier. A good swordsman, but not good enough, a poor archer, an average rider. He thought he had found love, but he’d never gotten to express it or experience it. He had failed to protect all he was pledged to protect. He had lost Marigold. He had led his soldiers to their doom. He had allowed Lily to die. Lily ...

Let there be an afterlife, as some claim, he thought. So that I might meet Lily again. This existence was not for him. He had led a lie of a life in the garrison. He had been a pampered fool in a sharp uniform, who had trained endlessly for battles that never came, thinking he was a warrior because he could chase off livestock thieves and break up tavern brawls. When real battle finally had come, he had been nowhere near up to the task. He had protected no one.

Sorry. That would be the first thing he’d say to Lily when he met her in the hereafter. Sorry. Let me be better for you in the next life than I was in this fading one. Let me try again. Please.