Mara toppled forward, with the Snyde infant perilously close to following. Willow was preparing to catch the child, but then Dillis unexpectedly reached up and steadied his wife so she didn't fall. Instead, she righted herself, grabbed the infant even tighter, and fled to the back of the farmhouse.
Dammit. It was supposed to be Dillis running, not Mara.
Willow climbed to her feet. She stomped Dillis’s face with the bottom of her boot. He fell back, blood gushing from his nose. She pointed her rapier at him while calling after his wife: “I’m not here for you, Mara! I just want the child. Give him to me, and you get to live.”
Mara didn’t slow.
Dillis looked like he wanted to get up, so Willow discouraged him with a solid kick to the knee. His howls turned to sobs and pleas, but she had no time for him. Instead, she sprinted after Mara. The baby in Mara’s arms wailed in distress. Once more, Willow felt her chest tighten. Goosebumps rose on her arms, and for a moment, Willow had a sense of impending doom.
She shook it off and yelled again, “Don’t run, Mara! Just give me the child. You and your husband will both live.”
Too late. Mara had reached the back door and yanked it open.
The cord Willow had secured to the door yanked free of the chock restraining the bent branch. The branch straightened, and the sharpened stick plunged into Mara’s thigh. Mara shrieked as the baby flew from her arms and into the night.
Willow hurdled over Mara into the darkness, trying to locate the child. Its ghostly wails echoed in the cold night.
She dropped to her hands and knees and crawled through the freezing mud. The cold wetness seeped through her breeches and sleeves. The unearthly cries guided her until at last, her hands closed upon the infant's pudgy leg. She gathered him into her arms. The screaming child grasped at Willow’s neck. She ran toward the lamplight leaking from the open farmhouse door.
Of course, he was covered in mud; Willow used her shirttail to wipe as much off as she could. A raw scrape along his chubby cheek made him look almost demonic in the flickering light. However, he was alive and healthy.
Objective achieved.
Willow wrapped the child in her cloak and walked back into the farmhouse. Mara was still transfixed by Willow’s trap, but she started wriggling, trying desperately to break free and escape Willow’s vengeance.
Only Willow had no vengeance. She hadn’t been lying when she said she was only here for the child. She really didn’t care about Mara or Dillis, but for their sake, they had better not ever cross her path again.
The two of them would survive if they just were sensible. Mara’s wound looked severe, but if she kept her head, she had every chance of surviving. Dillis’s nose would never be straight again, but he certainly would recover. Of course, Willow would barely have noticed such minor discomfort as a broken nose, but the amateur kidnapper clutched his hand to his face, howling in pain and misery.
Earlier in the day, Willow had considered torturing one or both of them to ask if that monster Four Fingers had somehow been behind this kidnapping plot. Now that she had the child, though, she decided that it was best to get him back to his family as soon as possible. The last thing she needed was for the child to catch a chill and die on the way back.
She stepped over Mara as if she were going for a casual stroll. She walked through the room, pausing only to tell the dumbfounded Dillis: “Apply pressure to the wound in her leg and get her to a healer. She might live.”
Then she walked past him, too, and out through the front door. She stepped calmly past the two dead brothers and headed for the field and her tree, where she collected her bow and quiver.
The child wailed in Willow’s arms, but she assiduously ignored it.
Chapter 3
The baby cried throughout most of the trip back to the city. Willow had bundled it in a wool blanket and then strapped the bundle to her lap. The Runjuns’ farmhouse was only two hours from the city, but with a crying infant in her lap, the trip seemed to last years. She wished there were a way to quiet him without injuring him; she was developing a blinding headache.
Had the weather turned unexpectedly foul, she would have stopped at one of three way stations she had prepared as contingencies. Each way station was within an hour of a wet nurse who had been paid to be available on short notice. However, though it was cold out, the night was not so inhospitable that it merited such a detour.
It was still dark when she neared the city gates, though there was a hint of pinkish-grey in the skies that heralded approaching dawn. The gates were closed and, under normal circumstances, would not open until sunrise.
“Identify yourself!” called the night watchman. That was Private Niktor, if she wasn’t mistaken. His voice was gravelly from disuse. The night shift was a lonely one, and often an entire shift would go by without speaking to a single person.
When the Guard had at last permitted Willow to join, so many years ago, it was to the gate’s night shift that they had most often assigned her. Her eyesight was superior to that of humans, especially in the dark. The assignment was an apt use of her talents … and it also had served as a “screw you” from the Guard. Few women had ever served, and never an elf. Humans didn’t hate other races as such, but neither did they hold them in especially high esteem.
Willow hadn’t minded the solitude; in fact, she preferred it. She didn’t need company. Other people were weak and undisciplined; they were constant irritants and potential points of failure. The fewer people involved, the less chance there would be of a screw-up. That’s why when the Chancellor ordered Willow to retrieve the Snyde infant, she’d gone alone. She knew she had a better chance that way.
The watchman banged his cudgel against the gate and repeated his demand that she identify herself. Now she was sure it was Niktor.
Odd for her mind to drift like that. That was unusual. She attributed it to exhaustion.
“Captain Willow,” she called to him. The infant began to cry again at the sudden noise and Willow ground her teeth. She could not fathom how any woman could tolerate being a mother.
She heard the growl of wood sliding against wood as the watch unbarred the gate. She kicked her horse’s flanks and passed through the gates as soon as there was enough room to get through them—almost before the guard had fully opened them. Niktor came to attention and saluted her. The hood of his cloak was down, and his dirty blond hair fluttered in the cold morning breeze, as did the cloak’s hem. She returned the salute and entered the city at a canter.
She rode through the deserted streets, the night silent save for the ghostly clanging of bells from the distant harbor as she approached the Snyde house. Magistrate Snyde was independently wealthy, having inherited his fortune from his father the “privateer”—to put it kindly.
The grey house stood four stories tall, and was constructed out of stone and mortar. A steel barbed gate surrounded the property but was unattended, so Willow let herself in. She approached the household, the mewling infant in her arms.
A solemn, grey-faced servant answered the door before Willow could so much as raise a fist to knock. His practiced nonchalance shattered the instant he laid eyes upon the crying bundle in her arms.
“I’ll … I’ll fetch His Honor,” he stammered and slammed the door in her face. Willow heard his footsteps as he raced into the manor.
She stared at the closed door with mild amusement. Was the manservant really surprised that she had succeeded? When had she ever failed?
She heard a brief shout from a woman within and then the sound of more running footsteps before the door opened. A handsome woman with a round face full of anxiety extended her arms to Willow, beckoning with flapping hands.
Willow gladly placed the baby into the woman’s arms.
The mother clutched the infant to her bosom as if she'd never let him go again. Her face contorted; her mouth opened and closed like a landed fish. Tears streamed from her eyes.
“Thank you,” she managed to say befor
e she ran off with her child, sobbing. The child’s wailing trailed off into the house. Willow shook her head, bemused. After over a century spent living among them, she still did not understand why humans did what they did.
After a moment, Magistrate Snyde appeared in the doorway, his lean, handsome face looking bored and devoid of emotion. “Well done … Captain Willow, is it?” His tone was both paternal and vaguely insulting.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Willow said, bowing formally and ignoring the slight. He knew who she was.
Everybody in Bryanae knew who she was.
“The Chancellor told me you would fail,” he said matter-of-factly, as though discussing the weather. She inhaled sharply through her nostrils but otherwise kept calm. She never failed.
Willow made a feeble attempt at diplomacy: “It’s his job to prepare for the worst, sir.”
Snyde chuckled and the corners of his mouth turned up in what might have been the beginnings of a smile.
“Quite so,” he said. Then seeming suddenly to remember something, he brought out his purse. “I must thank you for your trouble.”
Tipping a member of the Guard?! She contemplated grabbing his hand and breaking each of his fingers in turn. Instead, she merely shook her head, and said, “His Honor is very kind, but the Crown pays me handsomely for my service; I may accept no additional compensation.”
He blinked and looked at her with his head tilted. “What kind of guard are you?”
Willow couldn’t imagine he didn’t know all about her. His question had to be some form of mockery.
“An honest one, sir,” she said.
In truth, she didn’t need his money. While the King’s Guard did not pay much, Willow had little upon which to spend her income. As such, it just accumulated, year after year, decade after decade.
Once she had tried gambling a large portion of it away, just to see if the possibility of losing so much money would arouse some sort of feeling in her. She felt nothing the entire night, and to her mild surprise, had come away with almost twice as much as she had when she went in. Now she had more money and land than Snyde could ever hope to accumulate in his short lifetime. Furthermore, the land generated rent, which just gathered in a vault through a series of intermediaries, none of whom knew Willow was the owner.
But of course, there was no reason to tell Snyde that.
The baby’s cries in the background caught the magistrate’s attention and he bade her farewell. She bowed and took her leave, glad to get away from the baby's constant mewling.
Chapter 4
The few townspeople lugging goods toward the market gawked as Willow wound her way through Bryanae’s crooked streets towards her office. As the only elf and female in the Guard, she was used to their curiosity, but this time it was more; she realized that she hadn’t stopped to clean up after her encounter with the Runjuns.
Mud and manure stained her dull brown homespun cloak, and dark brown bloodstains crusted her shirt. Some of the blood had dried in her hair. If she didn’t bathe soon, she’d be covered in flies.
“Explain yourself, private!” croaked a male voice behind her.
Willow’s head sagged. Did she really need this?
“I’m waiting, soldier.”
Willow took a deep breath and turned around, coming to attention.
Crossing the stone-paved street toward her was a battered relic of a man. Upon his scrawny frame, he wore a replica of the King’s Guard uniform, replete with the blue cape. His rank insignia was the same as her own. His hair was a thin white bird’s nest, and he had a similarly tangled white beard. His mustache, on the other hand, was immaculately groomed and curved upward to points on each side of his wrinkled face.
People gathered in the streets to watch the spectacle. Willow seethed inwardly, but there was little she could do.
The general consensus in Bryanae was that Willow lacked anything that could remotely be considered an emotion. That wasn’t entirely true. Willow felt some things: excitement in battle, fear in dangerous situations, annoyance at incompetence, and so on.
However, the one emotion Willow felt the strongest was loyalty. She was loyal to Bryanae, to its royal family, to its military, and to its citizens as a whole, whom it was her duty to protect.
“Captain” Erol Jand came to a halt in front of her and dismissively returned her salute.
“You may stand at ease,” he said. He wobbled a bit as he stood, looking at her with eyes that were half-shrewd and half-crazy.
She did as instructed, waiting for him to continue his interrogation. She heard one of the bystanders snicker as he passed, but she ignored it.
When he was much younger, Jand had been a private under her command. His parents were farmers, so he had inherited a strong work ethic. What he lacked in polish and finesse, he had more than made up for with hard work and dedication. Willow had been grooming him for promotion, as she thought he would make an excellent sergeant.
Fifty years ago, she had handpicked Private Jand as one of two dozen soldiers to accompany her to Soravale, a Kyrnish outpost far to the east. A band of marauders was attacking the outpost, and King Corvus had sent Willow to find the marauders and slay them.
She had intended to repel the next attack with a hail of arrows and crossbow bolts, and had planned to interrogate the wounded to locate their base of operations. However, the marauders had caught her off-guard by using a weapon she had never encountered before called the Ba.
The Ba was essentially a hand-held siege weapon that hurled small stones a surprising distance. When the enemy started flinging rocks at them from well outside archer range, she had to change tactics, leave the keep, and charge the enemy to engage them in a melee.
A number of good soldiers fell, while a handful fled. Jand had charged alongside her despite the fear evident in his eyes. Then a stone caught him in the head, and he fell before the battle had even started.
“Explain yourself, soldier,” Jand said, poking her in the chest with a bony finger. He wrinkled his bushy white eyebrows in disgust. “You’re filthy!”
“Sir,” she said, “I was just—”
Another passerby snickered. Willow glared at him, furious.
“Eyes on me, private,” Jand said. “Not him. Now you were saying …?”
She had little practice lying, but she needed to make the attempt.
“Sir, my sergeant ordered me to put down an injured horse.”
“And you didn’t think to bring an apron, I’m guessing.” Jand started to cough, which quickly turned into a fit that wracked the old man’s frail body. Willow wasn’t an expert, but judging by that cough and Jand's general observable health, she guessed that Jand had less than a year left to live.
“Sir, yes, sir,” she said.
After the battle with the C’hi-Wa marauders, she had returned to find Jand still alive, but with a deep and bloody indentation in the side of his skull. His eyes had been looking in two different directions, and he shook like a dog’s chew toy.
Eventually, the shaking had gone away. Under the ministrations of healers, he had recovered most of his physical strength.
But the stone had damaged his mind. Jand could no longer remember drills or tactics; he barely remembered who and where he was.
Despite Willow's best efforts on Jand's behalf, he had been deemed useless to the Guard and released with but a small stipend for his service. The casual disregard for the health and well-being of one of her veterans wounded in battle was deeply offensive to Willow. She had challenged the presiding officer to a duel but he declined, severely reprimanding her for her “impertinence.”
Willow had found a hostel for Jand, and paid them enough to take care of him for the rest of his life. It still galled her that the Guard had refused to care for of one of its own. That was one of the first rules of the military: take care of your soldiers.
Jand had been cashiered from the Guard as a private, but for some reason, he had become convinced he was a captain. He had also forg
otten who Willow was, and thought she was a private. And a boy.
“Sir, are you all right?” Willow asked, concerned at the length and severity of his coughing. She reached out a hand to steady him, but he batted it away.
“What?” he said, only coughing sporadically now. “What, no. I’m quite all right, Private … Private …” He looked at her with bloodshot eyes. “What was your name again, boy?”
“Still, sir,” she said. “William Still.”
“Yes, of course,” he said. Now his eyes were glassy and unfocused. “Yes, of course. Private Still.” He looked around, confused. “What was I saying?”
“The captain had instructed me to get cleaned up immediately, sir.”
Tears rimmed Jand’s eyes, and he reached out to her with a trembling hand. “I can’t … I don’t know where I am,” he said, his voice tremulous.
“You’re in the garment district, sir,” Willow said. “Near Cobbler’s Square.”
Jand began to sob. “I don’t know where that is!”
Willow hesitated, then put her arm around Jand’s shoulders.
“It’s okay, sir,” she said, furious that this ignominious fate had befallen such a good soldier. “It’s okay. I’ll take you home now.”
She undressed as soon as she entered her office, letting the filthy clothing lay where it fell. She’d have to discard all of it; there was no way all that ground-in dirt and blood could be removed.
Even though she owned a cottage on the outskirts of the city, she rarely slept there. When she bought it, it was because it was something she figured she was supposed to want. However, having purchased it, she realized that she preferred to sleep in her office. She visited the cottage perhaps once every couple of months.
She filled her washbasin from a pitcher, wet a towel, and began to scrub the filth from her body. She wasn’t vain; she cared nothing whatsoever about her looks. She was, however, obsessed with discipline, and discipline demanded she kept her appearance conformant to the standards of the Guard.
King of Bryanae Page 2
