by A. C. Cobble
Amelie had recovered from overextending herself the day before and was talking to Towaal about the bolt of energy she’d struck the deer with.
“If we’re in a fight, then the only concern with doing too much is that you’ll leave yourself vulnerable,” explained Towaal. “If more enemies are expected to arrive, for example, or it’s a full-scale battle, you need to conserve your strength to face any new threats. If we’re facing a small party or a swarm of demons, and we have no reason to anticipate more of them, then give them everything you’ve got. It’s better to punch too hard and get the job done than not hard enough and leave your opponent still standing. Think back to what I unleashed at Snowmar Station. I may have been effective with half the energy I released, but at the time, it was more important to ensure I got them all than to hold back and conserve my strength.”
Amelie pushed back her hair, tying it in a loose ponytail. She responded, “For hunting, though, what I did was excessive.”
Towaal nodded. “True, you don’t want to fry your dinner before you cook it, but we’re not worried about you becoming an adequate hunter. We’re worried about you standing toe-to-toe with a mage from the Sanctuary. You have natural strength. You just need practice extending it. For now, think of it as using a ballista to hunt instead of a bow and arrow.”
“If needed, I can take care of the hunting,” offered Ben. “You can practice on a rock or something.”
Amelie set her hands on her hips and turned to face him. “Do you recall when you went hunting after we fled Northport?”
Ben frowned. So much had happened since then. He remembered it was freezing cold, and he’d fashioned a spear out of a stick, and he’d… He flushed.
“That’s right,” declared Amelie. “You missed. Let me handle the hunting, Master Ashwood, and you can wash the dishes.”
Grumbling under his breath, Ben hoisted his pack onto his back. It was three or four times heavier than everyone else’s, but he was stronger, and they were recovering. He hoped everyone recalled he had the extra load when it actually came time to wash the dishes.
Rhys, whistling tunelessly, shuffled forward and started slowly marching down the pine needle-covered road. Ben’s eyes narrowed suspiciously, and he followed his friend.
As the sun rose above them, they saw a few travelers headed in the opposite direction, one long wagon train, and several groups of adventures. They steered to the side of the road when they passed someone. Other than brisk nods, they didn’t communicate. The merchants in the wagon train seemed determined to make good time, and the adventurers looked like the type to seek quick fortune on the deck of a ship ransacking another ship. They didn’t pass anyone they were interested in sharing a camp with.
“Should we ask someone if they’ve seen Milo?” wondered Ben.
“That’s not a bad idea,” admitted Rhys. “A young man, alone on this road would be a bit unusual. Certainly, someone would remember it. That’d give us a feeling for how far ahead of us he is.”
“We’ll ask the next group that doesn’t look like future pirates,” decided Ben.
Over the next bell, clouds crawled across the narrow gap in the pine-needle canopy above them. Heavy, grey skies threw the forest into a dark gloom. Thunder rolled through the tree trunks, and Ben glanced at his companions. Rhys was shuffling along, breathing heavy. Towaal and Amelie seemed fine, but Ben decided there wasn’t any point in pressing on through a thunderstorm. They were days behind Milo already, and at the speed they were hiking, they weren’t going to catch him. The former apprentice was young and fit. He could be moving twice as fast as they were.
“Let’s find somewhere to stop,” suggested Ben.
“I can keep going,” asserted Rhys.
“Let’s take it easy now,” said Ben, “and then we can push hard later. We have a month in this forest. There’s no reason to exhaust ourselves in the first two days.”
“You’re the leader,” said Rhys with a wink.
Ben rolled his eyes and glanced behind them as another wave of thunder crashed overhead.
“If we are going to stop,” suggested Rhys, “let’s find a place quickly.”
Half a bell later, they huddled three hundred paces off the road under a rocky hill. Above them on the hill, a stout boulder served as a water break and sent rivulets of rain water to either side of their camp. Thick layers of pine needles kept most of the rain off, though steady drips fell down in some spots.
Ben had attempted to collect enough wood to start a fire, but the pathetic pile he’d assembled that was dry enough to light would burn out in a bell. He stared at it and then decided it was better to wait until later in case they really needed it.
All around them, the pine boughs sagged, heavy with the moisture, and the falling water formed a curtain that cut visibility in half. They agreed to stay in the relatively dry hollow below the hill and wait until the storm blew over before traveling again. In the heavy rain, they’d make even worse time than they had so far. So, they relaxed, talking quietly, leaning against packs, and tugging cloaks tight as fat drops of water snuck through the pine and plonked around them.
Down near the road, Ben thought he saw motion, but it was difficult to tell if a party was moving along, or if it was his imagination.
“Does it look like someone is down there?” he asked Rhys.
The rogue, who had been breathing deeply with his eyes shut, grumbled, turned his head, and glanced at where Ben was looking.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“If they’re out in a storm like this, they may need help,” said Ben.
Rhys kept watching and finally responded, “I think it is someone, but they’re moving away from Akew Woods. If they needed help, that’s where they’d go. Besides, what are we going to do, offer them the comfort of our camp?”
Ben grinned and glanced around the camp, if it could be called that. The four of them were sprawled out by their packs. In the middle, they’d set out some of the smoked venison and hard travel biscuits. Hardly a feast worth sharing. They had plenty of water, though, thought Ben wryly as he eyed the rivulets that ran beside them. The streams were quickly turning into tiny rivers in the pounding rain.
“It could be the pirates,” mentioned Amelie.
Ben sighed and sat back. He watched the motion until it disappeared down the road. Then, he followed the rogue’s lead and let his eyes sag shut. The afternoon passed uneventfully, and Ben drifted in and out of sleep. He woke to a steady drip of water that miraculously broke through the pine bough ceiling and landed directly on his forehead. Cursing and wiping the water away, he sat up.
Towaal and Amelie appeared to be asleep, but Rhys was awake and puffing on his pipe.
“I’ve been thinking,” remarked the rogue seriously. “I’m worried you didn’t secure enough drink to get us through this forest.”
“We had to leave in a hurry,” Ben reminded him.
Rhys exhaled a cloud of blue smoke. “Priorities, Ben. Priorities.”
Ben glanced around the forest. The rain had stopped, but water still fell from the tree branches around them. It was nearly full dark.
“What time is it?” he asked Rhys.
“A bell or two until sunset. Well, if we could see the sun, I mean.”
Ben nodded and got up. He started arranging their supplies as best he could into a more proper camp. In the damp, it wouldn’t be comfortable, but there was no sense leaving their spot for just a bell of hiking.
The next morning, the skies had cleared, and the birds were chirping again. Rhys and Amelie were feeling healthy enough to run through a few of the Ohm sequences prior to breakfast. Ben followed the rogue’s lead, letting the flowing motions relax the tension in his body. It gave him a sense he was doing something, even though they’d barely made it a day and a half walk from Akew Woods.
“Focus on centering yourself while you’re moving,” suggested Towaal. “Hardening your will is another skill that we’re going to need when we get t
o the City.”
“You think we’ll have to confront more mages?” asked Amelie. “I thought you said we couldn’t win a fight against the Sanctuary.”
“Certainly not against all of them,” acknowledged Towaal. “A direct battle near the City would be close to suicide. It would draw the mages like flies to spoiled meat, but sooner or later, we’re going to have to deal with the Veil. It’s a solid bet there will be others who try to stop us.”
Ben frowned. Towaal was right. They couldn’t risk a direct confrontation, but what she’d left unsaid was that they didn’t have a plan to do anything else.
As if reading his thoughts, Rhys said, “We’ll come up with something.”
While the sun was still hidden behind the trees, they trudged through the damp forest to the road. The track was hard-packed dirt, so it was passable, but their feet slipped and slid on the slick surface.
“This is going to be a long day,” groaned Ben.
Amelie nodded grimly.
They had to keep going, though. They’d already delayed too much. Ignoring the fat drops that still dripped from the trees onto his head, Ben led them down the path ever deeper into the forest.
They hiked two more bells before Rhys called out, “Hold.”
Ben paused, thinking his friend needed a rest, but instead, the rogue was glancing around suspiciously.
“What is it?” asked Ben.
“The forest has gotten quiet,” remarked Rhys.
Ben frowned as the rogue walked a dozen paces in front of them, his eyes scanning the surface of the road. Ben glanced behind them, but for hundreds of paces, the road was straight and clear. If anything was coming that way, it was too far off to have quieted the animals in the forest.
“Look,” said Rhys, pointing down at the mud.
Ben joined Rhys and saw a rut that a wagon wheel had dug on the soft edge of the road.
“There’s no water puddled in it,” explained Rhys. “This was made after the rain.”
Ben sighed with relief. “A wagon, maybe the same one we’ve been following. Nothing to worry about then.”
Rhys shrugged and stood back up. “Nothing I can see but something about this feels wrong.”
Ben started leading them down the road again. He loosened his sword in the sheath just in case. It was foolish to ignore the rogue’s instincts.
“Should we far-see ahead?” asked Amelie after a hundred paces.
“We wouldn’t be able to see anything,” answered Towaal. “You’d be looking at the tops of pine trees and not much else.”
“We don’t need to,” added Rhys. He pointed ahead.
Ben’s eyes followed the gesture and he felt a tremble of dismay. Barely visible, another two hundred paces away, was a boot. That was something to worry about. They quickened their pace, but when they reached the boot, there was no owner to go with it.
“That’s strange,” said Amelie.
Rhys was kneeling near the boot. Ben stepped beside him and saw a footprint pressed into the soil. Beyond it, a boot print then another footprint were spaced far apart like the owner was running.
“Nothing is ever easy, is it?” grumbled Ben.
“The group that passed us yesterday in the storm didn’t have a wagon, did they?” asked Amelie.
Ben and Rhys shared a glance and shrugged.
“Let’s keep going,” suggested Ben. “We’ll find what we find. Like Towaal said, if we think we’re going to face the Veil, we can’t keep running from everything that makes us jump.”
“We shouldn’t walk into ambushes either,” complained Rhys, but he drew his longsword and followed Ben down the road. He didn’t have to follow him long.
Ahead, hidden by a pile of fallen pine, was a carriage. It was on the side of the road near a bend as if it had been traveling too fast and had careened over the slick surface and crashed. Fifty paces short was a body, one foot missing a boot. Two more bodies lay beside the carriage.
They quickly investigated the scene and saw that the three dead men were together. A lord and his footmen, it appeared. One of them wore fine clothing, and the other two wore livery. Everything of value had been removed. There was no luggage or weapons. The carriage itself was wrecked, one of the wheels cracked where it had impacted a fallen tree. Whatever animal had pulled it was missing.
“Bandits?” asked Amelie, peering inside the open door of the carriage. “The ones I’ve heard of would have made more effort to hide their work, but this forest is lawless. Maybe they simply don’t care if this was found.”
“It could be,” muttered Rhys. “Even out here where no one will hunt them, they should still be concerned about warning other potential victims. Maybe the wagon was too difficult to move into the woods and hide?” He paused. “It looks as though they chased the carriage from behind, though, and I would expect bandits to set an ambush. Why run after a quickly moving vehicle if you don’t have to?”
“Pirates,” stated Ben. “It’s the men we saw in Akew Woods. They know Amelie is highborn, so an unmarked carriage would fit right into how they might think she would be traveling.”
“Look at this,” said Towaal. She was squatting by the rear of the carriage. The back wheel was smashed. Four parallel marks marred the wood next to the damage.
Ben glanced at Amelie. “The pirate Zane had some sort of claw, didn’t he?”
She nodded tersely.
Towaal was still squatting by the carriage. She traced a finger along the scars in the wood, and orange flames stirred in the wake of her gesture.
“This isn’t good,” she murmured.
Ben frowned as the flames blackened the seasoned wood.
“That claw did have some sort of glow to it,” said Ben. “We didn’t see it in action, but I believe it was mage-wrought.”
Towaal glanced at him. “You didn’t think that was worth mentioning?”
He scratched his head and didn’t reply.
Rhys was examining the wheel marks where the carriage had slid off the road.
“This thing didn’t crash because they were going too fast,” he said. “It was thrown to the side of the road. Look here. This impression suddenly stops and then a score of paces later comes down hard. Something rocked the carriage and knocked it into the air.”
Ben looked around the forest nervously. All was quiet.
Towaal stood and began pacing around the carriage, peering at it, glancing at the bodies. Finally, she admitted, “I know I said we shouldn’t run away from conflict, but we don’t know what these pirates are capable of. Clearly, they have access to more powerful weapons than grappling hooks and cutlasses. If such violent men are able to hold onto such dangerous weapons, they may be able to harden their will or have other devices that could harm us. These are not your typical pirates.”
“That’s what I’ve been saying,” muttered Rhys.
“What do you suggest?” asked Ben, ignoring his friend.
“It’s your decision,” said Towaal, “but the undergrowth in this forest is thin. There are rocks, gullies, and other obstructions the road avoids, but at least near here, the terrain is gentle. We could move several hundred paces away from the road and still make reasonably good time. It’s a risk to venture off the road, but…”
Ben looked at Amelie.
“We made good time when we traveled cross country after fleeing the Sanctuary,” she said.
Ben nodded. “We’ll move into the forest four or five hundred paces, hopefully that’s not deep enough to be dangerous. I don’t think we’ll catch up to Milo at our pace anyway, so we have no reason to risk a fight with these pirates. Unlike our battle with Eldred, there is nothing to gain from defeating them.”
They readjusted their packs, made one last look up and down the road, and then hiked into the forest. The ground was soft from the previous day’s rain, and it sloped gently up from the road, but underneath the pines, the space was clear. Ben found himself moving just as quickly as they had on the road. They walked far eno
ugh that the trees obscured the carriage. Then, they turned north.
“We may have to head back to the road if we run into a big creek, but this is easy travelling,” remarked Ben.
“It’s not bad,” agreed Amelie.
As they hiked, Ben couldn’t help but think of all of the horror stories they’d heard about the violent tribes in Akew Woods. So far, they hadn’t encountered anyone in the forest. It was a pleasant place, and while the thick trees would prevent serious farming, the woods teemed with animals, and there was plenty of access to clean water. The forest was more livable than many of the places they’d recently seen settlements, and that was what worried him. If there were no truth to the rumors, then certainly people would live within the forest.
They made it to the end of the day without incident and found a comfortable place to camp. After finding the scene at the carriage, none of them argued about setting a watch schedule. Rhys volunteered to take the first one, but Ben insisted the rogue spend one more day resting. Instead, he took the first shift and watched over his companions as they slept. Around them, things remained peaceful, but a sense of creeping dread was growing.
After his watch, Ben slept fitfully and was half-surprised when by morning, nothing had happened. All of them felt it. They scarfed down a quick breakfast and watched as a pair of squirrels chased each other up a tree.
“The animals don’t feel anything,” remarked Ben.
Amelie opened her mouth to speak and then stopped cold. She shot up and looked down the hill toward the road.
Towaal set aside the bowl she’d been eating breakfast out of and stood as well.
“T-That pulse,” stammered Amelie. “Did you feel it?”
Towaal nodded. “We should pack our things and begin moving.”
“What was it?” asked Amelie.
“Someone is questing,” explained Towaal, stooping to shake the rest of her oatmeal out of her bowl. She stuffed it in her pack without cleaning it further. “It’s a powerful form of sensing, similar to delving for water or minerals. I believe in this case, they were questing for life forces.”
