Ember and Ash

by Pamela Freeman

  Carefully, she sat up, cradling the bright circle of water. It had come like a blessing, and she didn’t know what to do with it.

  “Drink it,” Holly said from over her shoulder. “It’s good luck.”

  So she sipped the cold mouthful down, feeling as if she were drinking the essence of the world around her.

  The dew had fallen on her arm too, and it seemed to have eased the burning in her wrist, but their sleeping pockets were waterlogged.

  She and Tern hung them over spruce boughs to dry off as much as they could while they breakfasted, groomed the horses and saddled up. The fire was dead and she kept her mind from thoughts of how pleasant a hot mug of cha would be right now, concentrating on the sights and sounds of the morning: the chattering of red squirrels in the trees to the left, the song of a spruce grouse in the distance, woodpeckers tapping away, swallows already swooping over the stream in their eternal quest for gnats and midges. The air was full of mating and display calls, birds seeking their mates through melody and sheer noise. Ember felt herself relaxing; since swallowing the dew she seemed to be at home here, the woodland alive around her seeming to welcome her as it had not done the day before.

  Even the spruce needles smelled better. Cleaner.

  They mounted as the first shafts of sunlight began to stream through the branches, and set off in higher spirits than the day before. Ash kept his bow strung in case he could bring something down for the dogs, but although pink-footed geese flew high overhead, none came low enough for him to get a shot off.

  The Last Domain

  Ash kept Thatch, his bay gelding, well back, letting Holly and her men take the lead. He wasn’t even sure why he’d come. With such a well-armed, well-seasoned troop, Ember didn’t need him or Cedar. Well, Cedar might be useful, if he could get control of his Sight. It came and went unpredictably these days, although their mam said it would settle down now he had his full growth and was man, not boy. Sight was always useful, even if it was sometimes hard to interpret.

  But he himself was an extra wheel, that was sure. All he could offer was a good eye for the bow. And a shagging good bow. He slid his hand down the shaft, slung over his shoulder. A new type of bow, this one, designed in his master’s workshop back in Hidden Valley. Barley had been unsure of the idea—not one piece of wood, but several, pieced together with horn and glue and sinew, and then covered with leather to protect the sinew from the rain.

  He’d gotten the idea from a picture he’d seen of the bows they used in the Wind Cities, bows with twice the curve of the long shafted ones they used in the Domains. A longbow was accurate, and it could put some real punch behind the shaft, but it had a limited range in comparison to this little beauty—and what’s more, his bow was easier to shoot from horseback, the extended recurve making it shorter. The Western Mountains’ warlord had equipped his men with them already, with impressive results in their last battle against the Ice King’s men.

  He hoped he’d get a chance to show off its good points on this trip—Arvid had ordered fifty of them, but his men weren’t so sure about changing from their tried-and-true methods. If Holly could be shown its merits, that would go a long way to convincing the others.

  As they went past a field of blueberries, Ash saw a plover’s feather caught in the top of one bush. Leaning precariously from Thatch, he snagged it and put it safely into his pouch. Plovers didn’t have the greatest feathers for fletching, but they were strong enough and had a nice black and white section which looked smart. Some officers liked smart-looking arrows.

  Today’s journey was taking them into the Stinky Marsh. He’d had to suppress a smile when Holly had announced their route, but he wasn’t the only one. Still, better a stinky marsh than the unknown. At least this way, by dipping southward through the marsh and then coming up to the main track through the forest, they would avoid a whole day and night in the forest.

  Which was fine with him.

  Arvid’s maps were detailed and specific, but Holly didn’t seem to need them. She took them through the winding paths at the edge of the boggy ground without pause or hesitation.

  It did stink, of something a bit like manure and a bit like rotten vegetables, and the midges bit every exposed piece of skin, but it was a pretty sight, nonetheless.

  Reeds and sedges competed for the water space, but the small islands dotted between the marshes gleamed with the purple and gold of marsh thistles and dandelions, bog violets and meadowbrights. He could hear birds everywhere, even when he couldn’t see them: bitterns booming, the honking of geese somewhere a long way off, warblers singing high and fast, sounding one moment like a lark and the next like a lapwing. Ash couldn’t help but feel optimistic when he spotted a falcon circling; the smooth curve it made was a form of perfection, and he always considered seeing one a good omen.

  The sky was high and wide, with small clouds racing fast and the sun shining bright in between, but it was surprisingly cold as they threaded their way through the waist-high sedges. The wind was northerly, which Ash thought was unusual for this time of year, and it brought the scent of snow with it.

  Holly pointed to an island ahead of them, which was big enough to have sprouted a copse of willows.

  “We’ll spell the horses there,” she said.

  The path to the island was narrow and they went in single file through the reeds. Ash felt the back of his neck creep; there were no birds singing here, no frogs. The only signs of life were swallows chasing midges, and Ash knew that swallows paid no attention to humans at all, unless they got too close to a nest. But while their own presence might bring silence to some birds, it should set others warning their mates. Where were the kik-kik-kik of woodpeckers’ alarms? The sharp chirp of sandpipers? The trumpeting of whooper swans which should be nesting nearby?

  Holdfast growled, her hackles rising as she stared at the swamp.

  “Holly,” he called in warning.

  Holly’s mare had just set foot on the island. She half-turned in her saddle to hear him and at that moment shapes rose in the water on either side.

  Water spirits was his first thought, but it couldn’t be water spirits because these shapes came right up, out of the water, where spirits would melt into thin air, and they were solid and real and smelled disgusting and were carrying weapons. Spears, halberds, axes. Bandits’ weapons.

  His mind digested all of this slowly, it seemed to him, but his body was well ahead of his mind and he had brought his bow around, drawn an arrow, nocked it and shot before he had even finished the thought.

  One of the shapes screamed and fell. Holly and the guards had their swords drawn and were attacking. Holdfast and Grip leaped and crashed into the one nearest, bringing him down into the mud.

  Curlew and Tern were on either side of Ember, but the path was too narrow and Merry, her mare, didn’t understand that she should splash into the water to get away. She balked, putting Ember in danger. A bandit had reached the path and was grabbing for Ember’s bridle. Ash reached out and poked an arrow-tip into Merry’s rump. She sprang forward, knocking the man down, rushing up the path to the island. But who knew if she would be safe there?

  Ash nocked another arrow and let fly as the man on the path struggled to his feet. He fell. Ash dug his heels in and Thatch, war-trained, kicked out at an attacker behind them that Ash hadn’t even seen and then surged up the path after Merry. A body launched itself at him and tried to drag him from the saddle. He put an elbow into the man’s eye and kicked him away as his grip loosened.

  Ember had turned at the top of the trail and was hesitating.

  “Stay where you are!” he yelled at her. He turned back to shoot at more figures emerging from the bog, shedding hats made of reeds as they did so. He turned Thatch and shot again, forcing their attackers to dive back into the bog, giving Holly and the others a chance to make it to the high ground.

  He called the dogs off and took them up to the island to the others. They circled around until Ember was protected from all
sides, weapons at the ready.

  “Behind!” Curlew shouted, dragging his horse’s head around to face the trees. A second group of bandits ran down, axes and halberds raised. Ash’s arrow took one, a big man dressed only in trews, in the leg. The man roared and began to foam at the mouth. Oh, gods, protect them all. A berserker.

  The man swung his battleaxe around his head and screamed. His companions hastily backed up, coming around wide, leaving him room. He was so fast. He’d swung and felled a horse before Ash had another arrow nocked. The head came half off, and the second blow of his axe took down the rider. Ash let fly. The arrow took him in the shoulder, but it didn’t even slow him down. He brought his axe up from the guard’s smashed head and sent it curving backhanded, spinning around with both hands to shatter the leg of another horse. It screamed, the shrill sound cutting through the shouts and clangs and thunder of fighting.

  Ash was possessed by rage. He had been in battle before, but this was new to him, this fierce determination. Faster than he had ever done, Ash nocked and shot, nocked and shot. He sent arrow after arrow into the madman, who seemed to barely notice, dragging himself closer and closer to the center of the guards, where Ember was. Was it just her bright hair which drew him, or was something else acting through him? Ash forced himself to breathe; to take a moment to aim. At the crucial moment, the wind died and he let off the perfect shot: straight into the berserker’s eye. The man hesitated, swayed, and fell with a thud, back onto the rump of the horse he had killed.

  Ash allowed himself a quick look around. Ember had her dagger out, ready. Good girl.

  “Holdfast, Grip, guard,” he ordered, pointing at Ember, and the dogs set themselves ready, one on either side of her.

  Cedar was safe; several of the others were down and still, although a brown-haired young man was struggling to crawl further up the island, leaving blood in his wake. He had grumbled about having no cha that morning. Ash gulped.

  Holly and Tern were still horsed and unhurt; Curlew had fought off the berserker’s companions, but the others whose horses had been killed were dead—one crushed under her mount, the other gutted by a pike.

  “Adon’s down!” one of the enemy yelled and then the bandits were running, and running hard. There were few left to run, and two of those were limping. Tern began to follow.

  “Let them go!” Holly called. “Don’t separate to chase them.”

  He hesitated, then spurred his horse just a little, leaned out and over and hit one of the fleeing men with the hilt of his sword. The man fell like a poleaxed steer. Tern leaped off his horse and dragged the man back to Holly.

  Ash breathed. It was the first breath he could remember taking for some time. He became aware that he had a knife wound on his leg, a long but not deep slice. The man who had jumped on him must have done it as he fell.

  Ember.

  “Are you all right?” he demanded roughly. She was pale, but she smiled at him valiantly. He rubbed the dogs’ ears, murmuring praise. Holdfast’s muzzle was bloody.

  “I’m fine, but you’re hurt,” she said. She turned to Holly. “Is it safe to tend the wounded?” It made his heart ache that she should be so well trained in the protocol of guarding and attack. Holly sent Curlew and Tern out to scout before she gave the all-clear for them to dismount and see to the wounded.

  There were so few of them left.

  Ember saw to Ash herself, pouring clean water over his wound and binding it with lint and linen, kept clean in a special bag on one of the horses. Her hands were gentle but it still hurt. Tern had a scratch on one hand, but that was all.

  There were two other wounded; the brown-haired boy was badly injured in the thigh, and an older woman had a lighter shoulder cut.

  Holly pointed to a body rolling in the shallow water at the foot of the island. One of her men; middle-aged, gray-haired. Ash didn’t even know his name, and felt ashamed that he didn’t.

  Holly left Tern on guard with Curlew and took Ash down to fish him out.

  “Vetch,” she said. “A good man.”

  They assembled the other corpses. Three more. Horn, Onion and Violet.

  There were tears in Ember’s eyes. “The first deaths,” she whispered, as though she thought there were going to be others.

  “Not the last,” he said, and pointed to the bandits lying still on the pathway or half submerged in the bog. Three of those bodies lay still with his arrows in them. It made him feel sick, and he wasn’t sure if it was their deaths or the ease with which he had killed them that made him want to vomit. He might need those arrows. He had trained Holdfast to collect those that missed their mark, so together they went out, Holdfast finding the loose-lying arrows, and he reclaiming those that had found a target. It was bloody, horrible work, but the day had shown that their lives might depend on it, later. Ash tried not to think about what he was doing, and cleaned the arrowheads thoroughly afterward.

  The bandit Tern had knocked out was groaning. Holly walked over and kicked him in the guts to wake him fully.

  “You killed my people,” she said.

  “Not me, lady!” he protested. “I stayed well back.”

  “One and all the same,” Holly said. She was angry; the deep lines that ran from nose to chin were etched sharply on her face; her voice growled. “You’ll face my lord’s justice for this.”

  As though the knowledge of the certain death that awaited him gave him courage, the man stood up. He was around forty, Ash thought, and not all that bright, but he was as angry as Holly.

  “Justice? There’s no justice under the warlords, woman! Was it justice for my da to be run off his farm what we’d had for a hundred years, just so some black-haired bastard could ruin the best cropping land in the domain? Was it justice that Da got a piece of rubbish land, no good for anything but goats? He wore his heart out trying to make a crop come out of that ground, and for what? A shagging warlord?” He spat on the ground. “Look for justice from a warlord and you’re spitting in the wind.”

  As a farmer, Ash felt sympathy. His own family owned their farm, but he knew plenty of families who worked the warlord’s land, and had for generations. Arvid was the only warlord who believed in Valuing, the idea that each person had an equal value. The other warlords—including his own lord in the Western Mountains Domain—did what they liked with their people’s lives. How would he feel in this man’s place?

  Holly listened impassively and then, when the bandit had finished, hit him full across the face with the back of her hand, a massive blow which rocked him on his feet.

  “You killed my people,” she repeated. “You can choose to die here, now, or be taken back to the warlord for punishment.”

  “Kill me now,” the man said sullenly. “Might as well.”

  “Say any prayers you have, then,” Holly said.

  He laughed. “No god’s ever listened to me before. Why would they now?”

  “Are you ready?” Holly said implacably. Ash drew in a breath and looked across at Ember. Was she going to allow this? She looked uncertain. He shook his head at her and she nodded.

  “Holly,” she said. “I think it would be better if you sent him to my father.”

  “His choice, my lady,” Holly said.

  “No. No, I think it is my father’s choice.” Ember’s voice was quiet. Not pleading. Not ordering. But calm. Holly looked down, bringing the sword in her hand to rest position, with both hands on the hilt and the point on the earth.

  “My father wants more information about these bandits,” Ember said, her voice sounding odd this time. Holly nodded and pointed to the two guards who had been hurt.

  “You two, bind him, lash him on a pack horse and take him back to the fort. After he’s buried our people.” She paused for a moment, looking down at the dead bodies of her guards. “I am so tired of death,” she murmured. Ash knew she hadn’t meant anyone to hear.

  The burial service was brief but complete, and then they rode on, leaving the bandit and his guards to deal with
the other bodies.

  “They won’t come back, but better to be safe,” Holly said. Her face had closed in completely; it would be a mistake to try to talk to her. But Ember was different.

  On this side of the island, the path was wider and Ash could bring Thatch up next to Merry.

  “Did your father really tell you he wanted more information?” he asked Ember.

  She flushed a little. “I’m sure he would have, if we’d talked about it.” A lie. She had lied to save a man’s life. Was that wrong? It made him profoundly uncomfortable.

  “Mm. Princess, this journey we’re on—it’s not a time for lies. Lies throw up dust that blinds the teller as well as the listener.”

  She cast him a sideways glance, but she didn’t roll her eyes, as his younger sister Saffron would have done. She sighed instead.

  “I didn’t know what else to do,” she said.

  “Try the truth, next time,” he suggested. “That might have worked too.”

  “Or he might have had his throat cut,” she said, bristling a little. “My way was safer.”

  He paused, thinking hard. “Safer for him, maybe,” he said eventually. “But not for you.”

  Thatch took his momentary inattention as an opportunity to slow down, so he had dropped behind Ember before he realized. He let her go ahead. He wasn’t her big brother, who had the right to lecture her. He was surprised she hadn’t lost her temper at him. Two of his three sisters would have. She was more complicated than he had thought.

  He spent the rest of the day’s ride saying prayers for the souls of the men he had killed. Perhaps it would help them on to rebirth.