Shivering, she slipped her hand into the crook of her father’s arm. Upon the road, emerging from the mist, figures came walking toward them, men, women, and children herded to the tavern by two more of Chance Headsman’s Knights. With rough laughter, the Knights urged the villagers to speed by the pricking of swords, the bruising nudges of lances. A child cried out and fell. Her father grabbed her up swiftly and held her in his arms, away from the iron-shod hooves of a charger. One or two of the younger elves showed the marks of resistance, blackened eyes, bloody heads, a broken wrist swelling.
Chance Headsman threw back his visor, his glance alighting on each elf as the Knights drove them to stand in the tavern yard, a huddle of frightened women, angry men, sobbing children. Not one of them had a weapon, not even the small belt knife every villager carried as part of his daily gear. The Headsman looked at all those gathered, men, women, and little children clinging, as though he knew something about each of them. Last his eyes touched Jale. Bueren Rose held her father’s arm tighter.
Shouting, as though on a battleground raging with screaming and war cries, the Headsman cried, “It is commanded!”
At their mothers’ skirts, children stirred and whimpered. In her father’s arms, the girl who had fallen buried her face in his shoulder. Overhead, a crow called.
“By order of my lord Sir Eamutt Thagol,” bawled the Headsman, “he of Neraka and lately of the Monastery Bone, for crimes of murder and insurrection, the woman Kerianseray, a Kagonesti servant late of the household of Senator Rashas of Qualinost, is declared outside the law.
“By Sir Eamutt’s order, such decree renders her a person deprived of any consideration under the laws of her king. Neither will she receive the grace nor benefit of the laws of green Beryl, the dragon who rules here.
“All who see this woman are commanded to refuse her succor, denying her aid of food or weapon or shelter. All who see her are ordered to capture her by any means necessary and to bring her alive to Lord Thagol in Qualinost. There, she will he beheaded, her head piked upon the eastern bridge. This sentence shall be executed within the sight of the citizenry of the city.
“All who are so foolish as to aid her will share in her crime and so in her sentence. It is commanded!”
Howling, their voices like demons, the five Knights then spurred their chargers, torches whirling over their heads. Hooves tearing up the ground, the largest of the horses, that of the Headsman, sprang directly toward Bueren. She screamed, clutching her father. The great beast plunged between them, breaking her hold, flinging both aside. A sword flashed like lightning. Sir Chance spurred past them, and Bueren scrambled for her father, for the old elf was lying still upon the ground. The cries of the villagers became distant to her; they had no more voice man a breeze in the trees as Bueren lifted her father from the dusty dooryard. Blood ran in a thin line on his neck, all the way from ear to ear.
“Father,” she whispered. She lifted him, and her scream rang in the tavern yard, louder than the pounding of hooves, louder than the yowling of Knights. Her father’s head rolled from his shoulders and fell bloody into the dust. Her wails of woe were heard over the crackling of flames, the roar of fire as Chance Headsman’s men proceeded to put the Hare and Hound to the torch.
Firthing, the potboy, dropped to his knees beside Bueren. White in the face, his eyes glittering like polished stone, he took her hard by the shoulders. Thin, not half-grown into manhood, still he was strong, and his grip hurt. In her ear his voice grated.
“Come away, Bueren Rose. Come away!”
All around her, people panicked, Knights yelled, horses thundered. Villagers cried out, children wailed, and somewhere in tiie sky, ravens gathered. Firthing pulled at her now, on his feet, urgent. He jerked her to her feet She followed Firthing, running out of the dootyard, away from the fire, the screams and her dead father.
On the third morning since her flight from the Hare and Hound, after two days of hiding in the little cave to allow Ayensha to rest in stillness and begin to heal, Kerian went walking in the forest to check her snares. These she’d set using skills she only half-recalled from childhood, but the best hunters last night had been owls. Her snares were empty this morning. She sighed, hungry, and began a search for pinecones to free of their nuts. These she found in plenty, and a good stout branch to strip of twigs. She gave this to Ayensha for walking. She gave her most of the pine nuts, too, sweet and rich with oil.
“It isn’t much,” she said, “but I’ll find a way to feed us better soon.”
Leaning upon the sap-scented staff, Ayensha accepted the food and hobbled round the shelter to take water for herself. It was clear to both women that Ayensha would not lead today.
“Tell me the way,” Kerian said. “Speak the map.”
Ayensha lifted an eyebrow. “So. You remember the old phrase.”
Kerian said stiffly, “Yes, I remember things, Ayensha. Speak the map.”
In a voice small with pain, Ayensha did, with words painting a map upon which hills ran crowned by tall piles of stone, of pine marching on eastern ridges, and a narrow river in a deep chasm running south and then veering suddenly east In all lands and at all times, this was the manner in which Kagonesti relayed information, be it a message carried upon the lips from one tribe to another, a tale as ancient as the time before the Cataclysm, or the safest path to a meeting site. Ayensha spoke the way to the eastern border of the Qualinesti forest, where the Stonelands lay between the kingdom of the elves and fabled Thorbardin, the hidden realm of dwarves.
They made their way through the stony forest. Though Ayensha directed and Kerian led, Kerian did not imagine them safe. They traveled deep into the wood, far from the road, and the Qualinesti Forest seemed as well behaved as it ever had.
“I think we’ve come away from whatever it was that affected the forest,” she said to Ayensha.
Ayensha shrugged. “Do you think so?”
Despite her rescue from Lord Thagol’s Knights, Ayensha evidently didn’t trust Kerian nor seem to think much of her, but the woman knew something about the oddity of the forest’s behavior or suspected a truth she was not willing to share. Of that much, Kerian felt certain.
On the afternoon of the third day walking, the lay of the land changed. No longer did they find the tall oaks like the wood near Qualinost. Here, the trees were all of the same clan, the fir, pine, and spruce. The land became a place of ridges and deep glens where water ran freely and caves studded the walls. Some of the caves ran far back into the earth, others were cracks in stone, a gathering place for shadows. Kerian and Ayensha did not lack for shelter in the night or for water. In these generous places woodland creatures came to drink, and here Kerian trapped or fished with growing ease. It seemed to her that all her senses were becoming honed, keen and bright. One night, sitting in the darkness at the mouth of a snug cave, as she and Ayensha ate the cold meat of hares roasted at the previous day’s camp, they heard the crash and slash of heavy-footed creatures in the forest. All her nerves tingling, Kerian smelled the sulphurous reek of draconian on the wind. Unless the draconians turned from the path they were on, the reptilian beast-men would be near soon.
“Into the cave,” she whispered to Ayensha, pointing into the deeper darkness.
Ayensha, sniffing the foulness too, lifted her head to speak. Kerian cut her short.
“I am no warrior, and you are too weak to make up for what I lack. Into the cave, and we’ll trust ourselves to luck.”