by AJ Adams
Looking closer, I saw I was scratched, bitten, bruised and bleeding, but with all the gore, and the cart being gloomy, I wasn’t sure how bad it was. I couldn’t feel a thing. Thankfully, shock was at work again,
“Ohmigod! Ohmigod!”
“Ullr save us!”
“They’ll kill us!”
“They’re devils!”
The girls were hysterical. I looked at them, wondering what to do, when I realised Tawny was missing. I stood up and looked to be sure but I was right.
“Where’s Tawny?” Nobody was listening so I grabbed Mina by the wrist. “The sick girl! Where is she?”
Mina shook me off. “Tawny? How should I know?”
I remembered being tossed out as the cart was turned over. Tawny had been lying close to the doors. She must have been thrown out, too. She might have been picked up and put into another cart, but I couldn’t be sure.
I banged on the doors, and found them unlocked. The Beasts were rushing around, putting their wounded in the carts with the cargo, and stripping the dead bears of their weapons. Two carts had broken wheels, and the Beasts were emptying them and piling the goods into every empty space they could find. With half an eye, I saw they were loading the dead Beast and the blonde into a cart, too.
Rune was helping with the bodies, so I rushed over to him. “There’s a girl missing! Tawny! The sick one!”
He looked up and frowned. “She’s probably in another cart.”
“I’ll go look!”
All the carts were open, the girls too terrified to run off, so it took just a few minutes to check. She wasn’t there. All around me Beasts were getting ready to move on. I knew they wouldn’t risk a second attack, not for a sick Citizen, but I couldn’t bear the thought of her being alone in this creepy forest.
I stood and thought: if I were scared and thrown into a battle, where would I go? Glancing around, it was simple. I stepped off the path and began searching behind the trees that lay just off it.
“Hey you!” A Beast was growling at me. Brant, looking pissed off. “Get back here!”
“There’s a girl missing!”
He wasn’t listening. “Get back!”
I ignored him. “She won’t be far.”
As he reached for me, I ducked and ran down the side of the path, dodging in and out of the trees. I found her twenty steps or so away. “She’s here!”
She was unconscious, lying in a crumpled heap. But she was alive and unharmed. Seeing her, tears began pouring down my face. Crazy, right? Reaction, probably.
Brant picked her up, throwing her over his shoulder as if she were a sack of onions, “Come on! We can’t wait.”
I trotted behind him, and saw the convoy was beginning to move. The cart I’d travelled in was now carrying two wounded Beasts as well as some extra girls. It looked completely packed. Some of the girls were actually sitting on each other’s laps. Brant speeded up, tossed Tawny inside, on top of Mina, and then banged the doors shut. Me, I felt a familiar paw on my shoulder.
“You said you’d stay put.” Rune was looking pissed off.
“I told you! One of the girls was lost in the forest.”
“Get back in the cart.”
“It’s full,” Brant said. “They all are.”
Rune sighed. “Okay. Wynne, you walk behind the cart. If we’re attacked, crawl underneath it—and stay there!”
“Of course! I’m not an idiot!”
“You’re a damn fool,” Rune growled. “Brant, keep an eye on her.”
Brant was the one the Citizens had called “nice”. He looked like a regular Beast to me, but I soon saw why they liked him. “If the bears attack, take cover and stay quiet,” he said.
“And you’ll protect me?”
I said it sarcastically, but he nodded. “Yes.”
He thought I was scared, which I was, but as neither Beast nor bear was on my side, I was looking to learn as much as possible, to see how I could get away without dying in the process.
“Bears? They’re called bears?”
“It’s what we call them,” Brant shrugged. “They believe they have bear spirits.”
That explained the fur and fangs. “They’re crazy!”
“They’re drugged. They eat poison mushrooms before fighting. It kills pain.”
It also explained why they were attacking at random. The bears sounded nuts to me. Better to hurt than be out of your senses. Mind you, it meant they might be crazy enough to try again.
“You think they’ll be back?” I asked Brant.
He was soothing and protective. “Oh no! We’re just playing safe. There are too many of us.”
I saw through the lie. We weren’t rushing off because we were in a position of strength, but it also seemed unlikely the forest was filled with bear men.
I pumped Brant for information. “So there aren’t many of them? How do you know?”
“It’s not easy to live here. It’s poor earth for crops, and the streams are too shallow for fish. They attacked us to steal our supplies.”
“So having killed a bunch of them, there won’t be enough for another go?”
“That’s right. You’re safe.”
“But there are bear men all over the forest? Will we be attacked all the way?”
“No, the bears live mostly in this part. When we get past this mountain and over the river, we should be okay again.”
“Is that where Haven is?”
“It’s close. Haven is a twenty day march from there.”
The Citizens had reckoned a month, but the Beasts were fast. Me, I figured I would stay with the convoy, being protected by the Beasts, and after we got over the river, and we were a day or two away from Haven, I’d run.
A few days in the forest wouldn’t kill me. Also, I figured that nobody would help me if I arrived in a cart, chained, because the King’s Cross people hadn’t. But if I turned up as a free person, I could find work and earn my passage to travel south, back to Brighthelme, back to clear my name and claim my land.
Brant was a bit quiet, and I wondered if he knew what I was thinking. I told him what he wanted to hear. “You’ll protect me if the bears come back, right?”
He was smiling, “Sure!”
“Oh good!” I channelled Hildegard for inspiration. “I was so scared! It was awful!”
“Just stay with us, and you’ll be fine.”
“Oh, I will!”
Brant had no idea what I was planning, so I was cheerful as I walked, thinking I was finally onto something. That good feeling kept me going the first few miles, but with all the blood still on my arms and face, the flies came buzzing.
Also, with no boots, my feet were beginning to ache. The grass was mostly smooth, but there were stones, and I stepped on them all. It’s no fun to walk with bruised feet, and when the path began to climb, I became tired.
“How far is it till we stop and camp?” I asked Brant.
“Not far.”
“How sure are you we’re on the right track?”
“I’m sure.”
There was some mystery here. I channelled Hildegard again. “Really? What if we’re lost for ever and ever?”
Brant bit. “See the white rocks, placed every hundred paces?”
I hadn’t spotted them until he told me.
“Follow those, and you’re on the path to Haven.”
That solved the mystery on how the Beasts knew where to go. It also meant I’d be fine when I took off. The stones would lead to freedom.
The Beasts kept going, their long, loping strides eating up the distance. They were relaxed, not even breathing hard, and there I was: gasping, pink-faced, and sweat running like a river.
It got worse and worse. I began counting steps, just to get energy to keep going. Like the ten lashes—one more meant one less. One more meant one less. I lost track of everything, only of the need to keep moving. I couldn’t see, couldn’t feel. All I had was breath and willpower.
Through the fog, some
one was talking. “We’ll be there soon.”
“I’m good.” That was me.
“Not far now.”
“I’m good.”
My body vanished, leaving just willpower sustained by a vision of running, of taking off through the forest, making for freedom.
“Not far now.”
“I’m good.”
At some point I just passed out on my feet. I came to because I was flying through the air. I couldn’t feel anything, but I smelled familiar musk.
“I’m good.”
The world was bouncing about. My head was in the wrong space. I was flying upside down. I opened my eyes, and saw leathers. Far below, the ground was moving underneath me.
Rune was carrying me. I hung over his shoulder like a sack of apples. He loped past the carts and Beasts, dumping me in an unlocked, open-doored cart.
“We’re full!” a Beast growled. “Just cut her throat and leave her!”
“Don’t waste meat,” Rune replied.
I lay there, bouncing on top of a Beast or maybe two. Meat or not, I was grateful to be in a cart. I passed out.
Chapter Eight
We came to a rolling halt. I woke up with a start but quickly pretended to be asleep or unconscious. I didn’t want anyone watching me. When the cart stopped, the body underneath me shifted and pushed me to the floor.
Peeking out between half-shut eyes, I spotted some sacks of supplies in the back, and the rest of the cart was filled with wounded Beasts, all getting up and exiting. Some looked pretty bad, but when calls of “Conclave!” rang out, they disappeared.
I waited, eyes closed, counting to a hundred. Then I opened my eyes. Nobody in sight. I sneaked a peek through the slats. We were on a green stretch of grass, overlooking the forest. A river gushed nearby, huge, clear and from the look of it, super shallow where the white marker stone stood. The carts would make it across easily.
I slid out of the cart, tempted by the water. Thanks to the long march, every single muscle in my body was aching. My feet were bruised and bleeding, throbbing even when not in contact with the ground. I ignored it all; I’d go and clean up. The buzzing flies were driving me nuts.
The carts with the girls were on one side of the camp, still locked, and the Beasts were meeting on the other side.
“Look, we can’t keep them all!” Brant’s voice drifted over. “We can’t feed them!”
My heart stopped. Were they thinking of killing us after all?
“You’re thinking about last year,” Rune countered. “We have weapons now, so we can hunt more efficiently. We have cases of shot and powder, too. We can manage.”
“We should keep just a couple and share,” Siv growled, and at that, all the Beasts were nodding.
“We need to think ahead,” Rune countered. “I have calculated everything, and I say we do it now.”
There was some shouting, and I was missing bits, so I crept under a cart and used it as cover while I listened. I still couldn’t hear, so I scooted across and hid under another.
“Look, we need to plan for the future,” Rune was making his case. “We can turn east, go to Haven, get our wergelt, and go home. Or we can go forward.”
There was a dead silence. All the hair in my neck stood up. The tension was incredible.
“There is no certainty that we’ll get wergelt,” Rune urged them. “And we’ve our own needs.”
“We can get the best of both worlds by leaving some at Haven and keeping the rest,” Siv pointed out.
“They’re not strong enough to share,” a tall Beast pointed out. “We’ve lost half a dozen already.”
“So we sell them all,” another Beast growled. “Wergelt would be best, but we can always sell them as slaves.”
I felt a shiver go down my spine. I was a breath away from being collared, chained, branded. I’d be a slave again, and this time I’d die in chains.
“These girls are too weak to be of value as slaves,” Brant declared. “It’s not worth the trip.”
“We can maintain ourselves, but not a bunch of useless Citizens,” a lanky Beast said forcefully.
“If we go forward,” Rune said deliberately, “we have weapons to hunt; we can feed the extra mouths.”
“Are you certain?” Brant asked.
“Yes,” Rune was definite. “I figured out how to load the musket and use it. You saw that for yourself.”
“But it stopped working.”
“That was because a bear smashed the barrel. I think we can fix it, and if not, we still have a cart full of others.”
A cart full. The Beasts had a cart full of muskets. I just couldn’t believe it. My mind flashed back to that day in Brighthelme when Rune had gone away, fighting Guildsmen at the smithy. He’d come back with two loaded carts. He’d sold a dozen, and kept the rest. The Beasts had an arsenal worth a city.
“Maintenance is doable,” Rune continued. “We’re good metal workers, as good as the Brighthelme craftsmen. We also have cases of black powder, and making that and shot is easy.”
Rune had it all figured out.
“It is good to have a woman in your bed.” Brant was wavering.
“I guess winter’s coming,” Siv mused, “and I’m fed up with arm wrestling.”
There was a pregnant pause, and then Rune drawled, “If we move forward, I’ll probably start losing.”
Right, because he’d be fucking instead of living with self-service. Great. There was no way I was going to be stuck in Beastville, helping Rune lose at arm wrestling. Time for a new plan.
I would make my own way to Haven. It wouldn’t be easy, but I could find nuts, berries, mushrooms and grass. I’d survive. I’d have to sneak from my cart across a bit of open space, under the girls’ carts, and out the back.
I began moving backwards, crawling quietly towards the path that led to Haven. It wasn’t dark yet, but the Beasts were busy, so busy that they weren’t watching.
“The girls can cook, clean and wash,” a lazy Beast was saying.
“They can grow vegetables,” another crowed.
“They can farm for us?”
“Yes! We put them to work!”
“I’m in favour of keeping meat!”
“Me, too!”
I’d heard enough. I got up on all fours, took a breath, and rapid crawled across the grass, ending up under the next cart. A minute later, I was looking at the river, poised to hit the path to Haven, looking out for the white milestone.
If I spotted anyone, Beast or bear, I’d run in the trees, a few paces off the path, staying out of sight. Seeing that the next white stone was downhill, I’d be far away by the time anyone missed me. Also, I’d jump in the river, first chance I had. The flies were still buzzing, attracted by the dried blood from the battle with the Bears. It seemed a lifetime ago, not a mere matter of hours.
“There’s no way she passed the perimeter,” Rune’s voice was right next to me, sounding annoyed.
“She’s in a cart,” Brant was there, too, “talking with her friends.”
“She doesn’t have any.” That was Siv, of course.
“Look in the river,” Rune again.
Siv disappeared, but Brant was arguing. “She’s somewhere close by. Why are you worried?”
“You told her how to get to Haven.”
“I was reassuring her! She was afraid of the bears, of getting lost in the forest!”
“She pumped you for information.”
No flies on Rune! Now if only he’d go to the other side of the camp! But the bugger stayed put, right in between me and the forest.
“She’s not in the river.” Siv was back. “And the spotters say nobody passed them.”
There was a pause. “Look under the carts,” Rune ordered.
He was looking straight at me a second later. I didn’t even try and fight it.
“Out!” he said, and out I came.
“You should beat her,” Siv growled. “She’s more trouble than all the others put together.”
“Just you wait!” I snapped right back at him. “They’re quiet because they think their people will rescue them at Haven. The second they discover your plan, they’ll be cutting your throat as you sleep!”
“And that’s why you’re not telling them,” Rune said calmly.
Me and my big mouth! I was back in the cart with the cargo, chained and gagged, doors shut before you could say, “Double-crossing, hairy-arsed, cowardly Beast!”
I could hear the three of them talking.
“She’s right,” Brant said. “The others will be trouble if they hear we’re not sending them home.”
“Beat the hell out of one, and the rest will toe the line.” Who else? Siv, of course.
“I agree.” Brant was not so nice after all. “They’re soft. We pick just one as an example, and that will quiet them all forever.”
“There’s no need,” Rune was quietly jubilant because they were following his plan. “I’ll make sure she doesn’t talk. As for the others, they’re soft, like you said, and they’ll settle down quickly enough. I have some ideas on how to work that.”
He would, too, the clever Beast.
Brant was pragmatic. “Now, how do we divide everything? Who chooses first? And what if two of us want the same one?”
Like we were sacks of apples.
“No man wants that flame-haired witch, that’s for sure,” Siv said.
“We’ve got plenty of time to work it out,” Rune again.
Then they walked off, so I couldn’t hear anymore. I lay there, trying to rub the gag out of my mouth. It didn’t work this time. Rune had shoved his tunic in my mouth and secured it with a strip of leather. He’d shackled my feet and used more leather to bind my elbows. It wasn’t wickedly tight, he hadn’t pulled them so far back that they touched or anything, but it was horribly secure.
After an hour or so, the smell of food drifted through the air. There was some shouting, and I heard the sounds of laughter. They were eating.
“We’ll soon be at Haven,” it was Mina’s voice. “We can make it.”
“But our families will be days behind!” That sounded like Lizbeth.
