by Krista Walsh
“Probably pointing out all the places he’s killed a man,” Jeff grumbled.
“Hmm?” asked Brady.
“Nothing.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much, my friend. Miss Murphy is not the type to go for the—”
“Handsome and sophisticated?”
“I was going to say ambitious adventurer. Much like our own ambitious adventurer is determined not to glance backwards to say farewell to the woman who’s watched us all morning from the window.”
Brady’s eye fell on Jayden’s back, and Jeff craned his neck to look back at the palace. Up on the second level, Ariana sat on the window sill, one leg draped outside over the wall. For a brief moment his eye caught hers, and she gave a small wave. He returned the gesture, then turned away to leave her with her silent goodbye.
“Did you know?” Jeff asked.
“Not at all. I spent some time thinking about it after the day’s revelations, and I sort of remember when it must have happened. Jayden had gone to the summer house after a fight with his father. He came back a different person, more like the man you know now. Gone was the easy arrogance and ideal views of a young man, and in his place was someone who no longer knew what he was searching for.”
“You say he lost his easy arrogance?”
Brady chuckled. “What you see now is a very practiced shield. I’m not saying he’s not still an overconfident son of a bitch at times, but at least now he’s earned it. He was a cocky bastard when he was younger.”
“I’m glad I only met him in his later years then. So what do you think? Did it mean as little to him as Ariana said?”
Brady fell silent, still watching his friend. After a moment he turned back to Jeff, sadness mixed in with his smile. “On the contrary. I think it was the most meaningful experience of his life.”
As the road pushed the group closer together, overtaken by forest on either side of them, their conversation ended. The air grew warmer as the trees canopied over their heads, and Jeff found himself wishing for a breeze.
“Sure got warm all of a sudden, didn’t it?” said Jeff, trying to break the sudden oppressive tension he felt.
Brady nodded. “The temperature hasn’t changed, but I know what you mean. Something’s wrong.”
He spurred his mount forward to squeeze around Cassie and ride next to Jayden. He leaned in to whisper something to him, and Michael rode ahead to offer some privacy. When Brady pulled back, Jayden sat up in his saddle and looked around, turning his horse to ride to the end of the line. He gave a wave to Cassie, Michael, and Darcy in reply to their curious stares.
“I think I might have dropped something,” he said in explanation as he started back down the road. “You go on and I’ll catch up.”
The three listened to his suggestion and rode on, but Jeff stayed behind with Brady who had halted to watch Jayden. Harold reined in as well, but kept his distance.
“What’s going on?” Jeff asked.
“We’re being followed,” Brady explained. “There are eyes in the trees.”
He nodded his head towards the woods on their left, and Jeff stared past the leaves. For a moment, he saw nothing, but then the creature blinked and disappeared, the rich amber-coloured fur fading into the shadows.
“Foxes?” he said. “Are we afraid of foxes?”
Brady grimaced. “It depends on the breed of fox.”
Jeff didn’t need further explanation. They were searching for Raul, after all. That man had no lack of pets to send after them. He froze in his seat, fingers around the reins so tightly his knuckles ached. Sweat tickled the back of his neck, and he twisted his head back and forth to search for where Jayden had gone.
Once the other three noticed they had lost half their group, they stopped and came back to where Jeff and Brady waited.
The whole forest held its breath.
Then like a shot, a skulk of foxes lunged out of the trees, at least eight of them, darting towards the horse’s legs. Allegria reared up as one of the beasts nipped at her, and Jeff rolled out of the saddle onto the road, landing on a second fox with a sickening squelch. He gagged as the scent of sulphur from the creature’s rotten insides drifted up towards him, and he rolled off to regain his feet. Jayden rode up behind them, scaring the mutated mutts out of trees and onto the road. He chased after them with sword in hand, trying to cut them down, but unable to reach. Michael and Darcy had already dismounted, their horses dancing, stomping on the rampaging vermin.
Harold, Cassie, and Brady remained on their horses. Harold allowed his mount to fend off any beasts that approached, while Cassie and Brady tried to gather the reins of the other mounts so none of them bolted. One fox, growling and spitting, jumped at Cassie’s feet, but Darcy used his blade like a baseball bat and knocked him down, driving the point of the sword into the mutt’s guts. His sword came out stained black.
“What in the nine gods’ names are these things?” Michael yelled as his sword swung towards a fox’s head only to get lodged into the fur. He struggled to free the blade, while Darcy spun around to face another.
“Raul’s creations,” Jayden replied. He brought his blade down in a swift hacking motion, cutting the creature in two.
Jeff counted four dead. One toyed with Darcy, spinning him in circles and jumping for his ankles, while another had jumped at Michael’s horse’s neck, sinking in its razor sharp teeth. The horse reared, the fox fell, and Michael grabbed it by the scruff of its neck, slitting it open from neck to gut before throwing the carcass back on the road.
Cassie and Brady fought to stay mounted, the spooked horses dancing dangerously close to one another. More than once Jeff thought one of them would have a leg crushed in the chaos.
Trapped on the ground, he wished he could mount back up, but the foxes knew he was the weak member of the herd. The other two beasts had pinned him in against a tree trunk. He saw their red eyes and wondered how many defense mechanisms Raul had given these beasts. Michael’s horse was still alive, so at least he could rule out poisoned teeth.
With that assurance, he let out of a scream and kicked, booting one of the foxes across the road, where Jayden waited to finish it off. The other one growled and lunged. Jeff leapt out of the way and the last fox crashed into the trunk of the tree with a yelp. It landed, dazed, at its base, and Michael stepped in to run it through with his blade.
The four of them, out of breath and foul-smelling, remained standing in the road. Cassie and Brady finally dismounted and led the horses forward. Harold remained silent, apart from the rest. The entire group stared into the trees, braced for another attack. After a minute, Jayden relaxed.
“I think that’s it. For now.” He wiped his sword on the grass to get off the worst of the blood and re-sheathed it.
“How did he know where we were?” Cassie asked, her voice trembling. “Was that a coincidence, or an attempt to delay us?”
“Does it matter?” Jayden spat and wiped his mouth with his arm. “Either way that’s what he’s done. This attack wasn’t meant to kill us. If it were, why not send the cougars, or another bear?”
“You think he meant to track us?” Brady asked.
“You mean there are more of these creatures out there? Different kinds?” Darcy swallowed and poked one of the foxes with the toe of his boot.
Jeff felt a laugh bubble up in his throat. These foxes had been nothing. A mere distraction. The thought of what might wait for them at the Retreat now terrified him. He saw the panicked glance Darcy cast his father, and wondered if he now regretted tagging along. Jeff wouldn’t have been heartbroken to see him go back.
Brady opened his mouth to speak, but Harold cut him off. “We’d better move on.”
Everyone turned to stare at him, shock still keeping mouths tongue-tied.
“The man’s right,” Michael said after a stretched pause. “No point sitting here an easy target.”
Cassie shuddered, and Jeff moved forward. But before he took a second step, Darcy resumed his plac
e by her side. He whispered something in her ear that made her smile, and Jeff ducked behind the horses to hide the emotions he was sure showed on his face.
It took a few minutes to calm the horses enough to mount back up. Allegria was unhurt except for a few scratches on her legs, but Michael’s horse needed some medical care before they could continue. Blood gushed over the brown horse hair in four deep gouges.
“He’s seen worse, my warhorse,” said Michael, “but he’ll be none too happy with me for awhile.”
They cleaned him as best they could and within a quarter of an hour were back on the road.
Jayden set the pace to a trot, and they moved in silence for another hour.
By that point the sun had reached its zenith, and Jeff could feel his skin sizzling in patches where the rays fell through the trees.
“We should stop for lunch, rest the horses,” Michael said, loud enough for everyone to hear. “We’ve all had a scare and could use a break out in the sun.”
He started to rein in his mount, but Jayden shook his head. “We’ve kept too slow a pace as it is. We should get to the Retreat. To hear the princess tell it, and if those foxes were any sign, we’re not likely to find Raul waiting, but maybe we can figure out where he’s headed.”
“We’ll be no use once we get there if we haven’t eaten,” Darcy argued.
Jayden reached into his pack and pulled out a wrapped package of salted beef, tossed it to the soldier. “Munch on that if you’re hungry. Not the first time you’ve eaten on the road, I’m sure.”
Jeff watched the exchange, accepting that Jayden was right. His back and behind could use the stop to walk around, but in these woods, they’d lose the sun soon, and he had no desire to come upon Raul in the dark.
“I wouldn’t say no to a walk,” Cassie said.
Darcy looked ready to continue arguing on her behalf, but Michael spoke first. “Man has a point. We keep going, we should get there in just over two hours. We’ll follow you, my Lord.”
The trees thinned out as they continued west, and with the soft breeze under the warm sun, the horror of the attack eased, the horses calmed, and although Jayden kept the pace steady and quick, there was room for some conversation.
The Redwater River churned beside them. As they came up on a clearing on the other side, Michael said, “That’s the site of one of my favourite histories.”
“Looks pretty,” Cassie commented.
“Full of dead folk is why,” Michael explained. Cassie swallowed, and took a second glance, this time looking ill. Jeff could empathise. After the stench of dead foxes, he thought Michael could have chosen a better tale to tell.
But the story had already started, and his interest was raised, so he asked, “Why?”
“Happened, oh, ‘bout a hundred years ago now in the day of King Francis. He got a bit batty in his old age, started wars to gain more land, and when that wasn’t enough, he started killing off his own advisors to maintain his power. Everyone was out to get him, he thought, so he built a gallows in that clearing and hanged a dozen people a day if not more. From what I’ve been told, it’s incredible enough people lived to keep the city running at all.”
“Ansel Gendron, our current queen’s granddaddy, and who she was named after, managed to get out of the city and strike a deal with the Margolian Queen. Married her daughter and brought back a thousand men to take Andvell back. He rounded up the whole lot of Francis’ family and followers—the brothers, sisters, children, cousins. Over a hundred people were taken to the gallows Francis had put to so much use. Ansel even built up a few temporary ones just to accommodate the number. And he hanged ‘em, all hundred in a day, and left the corpses to rot in the grass. According to the story, he was heard to say that Francis had at least done one thing right, building the gallows downwind from the city.”
He chuckled, and Jeff cast another uneasy glance over his shoulder at what little they could still see of the clearing.
“So that was that. Ansel Gendron became King Ansel and he built the city back up again.”
“And this is your favourite battle?” Cassie asked.
“There’s a lot more to it I won’t bother with today, but the history says a lot about how we came to be where we are. How far we’ve come, and how lucky we are.”
Jeff was grateful he’d set the Feldall Saga during the time period he had. He didn’t know how long he would have survived if he’d been summoned here under King Francis’s rule.
“What about the relatives that survived?” Brady asked. Jeff looked back at him, unaware he’d been listening. In fact, he was surprised Brady had any questions—Jeff would have thought he’d be an expert on the subject like he seemed to be on everything else.
Michael raised a shoulder. “To this day the black and orange sigil is still a threat, and an insult to some, but most of them were happy to drop it.”
Jeff jumped on the sigil, the image from the book he’d flipped through last night coming back to him with its bright colours. “A black bear?”
“That’s the one. Time past, the black bear of Basten was the most feared symbol in Andvell.”
Jeff’s eyebrows rose. “Basten?”
“That’s right.”
“But—” Cassie started. “How did he become the closest man to the queen?”
“His grandfather was one of the first to disassociate himself from Francis. He went with Ansel to Margolian to beg the queen for help. Marlin Basten became Ansel’s first counsellor, and so it’s continued since then.”
“I don’t know how I’d feel about that, having my closest companion be the relative of an insane monster,” Cassie mused. “But I guess you can’t hold one man’s crimes against an entire family. Not when they prove themselves trustworthy.”
“No one I’d trust more than Basten,” Darcy spoke up. “I think he’d crawl all the way up the queen’s backside if she’d let him. But she’s got too much class to surround herself with sycophants.”
“It’s a wonder she spends so much time with him as it is,” said Cassie. “He seems like a stuffy, grumpy old man.”
Darcy laughed, and Jeff’s eye twitched.
“I wouldn’t dare disagree with you, my lady.”
To get a break from the giggling pair at the front of the line, Jeff fell further behind to ride next to Harold, hoping he hadn’t heard too much of Darcy and Cassie’s conversation from way back here.
The first counsellor’s man looked exactly how Jeff would have expected the first counsellor’s man to look: face long and gaunt with no hint of humour; eyes sunken with dark circles that reached his cheekbones, which suggested he made a habit of long nights and little sleep. His long fingers held the reins comfortably, but his seat in the saddle was as unpracticed as Jeff’s. This was a man of books, not of the road.
Up to this point, he had exchanged no more than fifteen words with the rest of them. In case it was due to shyness, Jeff asked, “How long have you worked for Counsellor Basten?”
The man’s gaze slid towards him, and his head turned with exaggerated slowness, a silent, yet very loud, discouragement from any further conversation.
Jeff pressed his lips together and squeezed his knees to spur Allegria back up towards Brady.
“A strange, strange man,” he commented under his breath.
Keeping Brady as his travel companion the rest of the way, the time passed pleasantly. The scholar had never been one for small talk, but he was good at prompting Michael to chat about various subjects, and that kept Jeff from thinking too much about anything else. Michael and Jayden spoke a lot about the capital, having a large number of mutual friends between the families, but Jeff noticed how Ariana’s name was safely omitted from all topics.
“The Amesbury Retreat should be coming up soon,” Michael called out, loud enough for everyone to hear but no louder. “I’m thinking we should dismount and go on foot. Be easier to stay out of sight, sneak up on anyone still inside.”
The others did as he sug
gested, Jeff bracing himself against a tree so he didn’t fall on his ass. They tethered the horses and crept forwards.
“Should we all go?” Darcy asked. “Maybe it would be best if only a few—”
He caught their stares and cut himself off with a shrug.
No one bothered to ask Harold. He’d already made himself comfortable on a rock next to the horses. The other six trailed in a single line up a slope towards the old estate. A screen of branches and leaves blocked it from view, and hopefully them from anyone on the ground.
But they needn’t have worried.
When they reached the top of the hill, the first thing to hit them was the cloying scent of decay and cooked meat. In the yard in front of the Retreat, a dozen corpses lay in a heap, their skin smoking and charred, shreds of expensive business suits still clinging to what remained.
Chapter Nine
Cassie let out a gasp, clutching her hand over her mouth. Darcy rested a hand on her shoulder and Jeff watched her closely, prepared to go to her if she looked ready to fall. In a moment her legs stopped wobbling and she stood staring in awe, shrugging Darcy’s hand away.
“He’s killed them all,” she whispered.
“We don’t know that,” Michael replied in a hushed voice. “There could still be people inside.”
Cassie shook her head. “The people he brought with him. He just killed them.”
“Are you surprised?” Jayden asked. “The man’s a demon in human form. But he must have come back to do this. Ariana said she saw him ride off. She didn’t mention the bodies.”
Michael, Darcy, and Jayden headed for the estate, while the other three waited outside to find out if it was safe to come closer. A few minutes later, the men returned.
Jayden shook his head. “Empty.”
Brady approached the heap, circling it. “Why would he set them on fire?”
“Because he’s evil,” said Jeff.
Brady shook his head. “He likes a good show, but doesn’t waste effort if he doesn’t need to. He knew we’d come looking. Why not leave them scattered around inside? The smell would have been worse, too. Greater effect.”
