“We didn’t think it was important.” Bernadine said. “We wanted to shelter you from—”
“I didn’t want to be sheltered,” I hissed. “I wanted to be loved. My mother was gone, and all I had from you were harsh words and reprimands. You never loved me, did you? You never wanted me. All I remind you of is him. You think I’m evil—”
“Don’t you dare suggest such a thing.” Bernadine snapped back, her eyes furious. “I love you Ada. I love you more than anything. We are not all sweet like your mother. I have had to be the strong one, the brave one, and I am used to shutting my feelings away inside so that they don’t blind me. Do not berate yourself for your lineage, for you are not your father. The truth is, you remind me of Ysmay so much – you are good and kind and foolhardy – and sometimes it is painful. I take my pain out on you, and I am sorry. It is wrong of me.”
She turned away. I realized then, just how little I knew of her life, how little I had thought of her feelings over the years. I’d never stopped to wonder what it must have felt like to lose a sister, and to have to care for that sister’s daughter, a child whose constant presence reminded you of what you had lost.
Bernadine made a sniffling noise. She’s crying, I realized. I had never seen her cry before, not once. I reached across and took her hand. She squeezed it, once, then dropped it.
“Let’s not get overly sentimental,” she said. Her voice was harsh, but her eyes sparkled with tears. She wiped her hand across them, and just like that, the pain was gone. She was Aunt Bernadine again.
* * *
I tried to stay awake, but my eyelids fluttered shut, and the next thing I knew, Bernadine was shaking me roughly. “Wake up! She’s here!”
My eyes flew open, and my heart soared as I caught a vision of a woman clad in a black cloak rushing along the path toward us. Even though I couldn’t see her face, I knew it had to be Aubrey, for Aunt Bernadine was too busy hobbling toward her to reprimand me for falling asleep.
The two sisters embraced. Aunt Bernadine held Aubrey at arm’s length. “How dare you do that to me?”
I stood behind her, grinning madly. It felt good not to be the one in trouble for once.
“I am sorry,” Aubrey replied. “It took longer to reach the village than I thought. There were men hunting in the forest, and I had to move in a wide circle to avoid them. But I did it. And what’s more, I have our needs covered for the next little while. I found a lonely hunter in need of comfort. I will return to his cabin in six days.”
“Good,” Bernadine said. “That buys us some time.”
I don’t know if Bernadine noticed the sparkle in Aubrey’s eyes, but I did. Aubrey saw me staring at her, and quickly looked away. It’s probably for the best that Bernadine doesn’t notice her glowing skin, I thought to myself. I wondered how many times she had lain with this hunter while we had worried for her.
“We must bring you to Maerwynn immediately,” Bernadine said. “She will be anxious to see you. She and Ada have invented a cockaninny plan to attempt to rid us of the curse.”
“Oh, yes?” Aubrey looked questioningly at me, but her tone implied that at that moment, she wasn’t entirely certain she wanted the curse broken.
“Maerwynn thinks that with the power of the whole circle, plus the three of us, we may be strong enough to break it.”
“Does she now?” Aubrey grinned, her eyes glazed over. I grabbed her hand and dragged her down the path toward Maerwynn’s cabin, before Bernadine realized that she’d fallen for this hunter.
Ulrich
Every day that I travelled further from Ada, she haunted my thoughts. The wind on my skin reminded me of her kisses, the soft nuzzle of Willow’s snout as I fed her an apple brought to life Ada’s touch. Tjard spoke to me and I heard her voice. I wondered if this was what was meant when people talked about being “driven mad by love.”
I’d known it wouldn’t be easy to leave her, for I would worry every day for her safety, but I hadn’t realized quite how much I’d come to depend on Ada’s presence in the short weeks I’d known her. Without her bright smile and searching eyes, my days felt desolate, hollow.
But not devoid of purpose. My veins burned for vengeance. My father would pay for everything he had done to me, and for the bounty he’d placed upon Ada and her kind.
As Tjard and I rode through the forest in the direction of Rotstrom castle, we discussed all the ways we imagined exacting our vengeance on my father. The deeper into the woods we got, the sillier the suggestions became.
“We could strip his clothes, tie him down, smother his body in honey, and wait while insects sting him to death,” Tjard suggested.
“Or drown him in a vat of mead.” I replied.
“Or throw him in a pit filled with starving badgers!”
I grinned as I steered Willow around a large rotting stump. It was good to have Tjard beside me. He kept me sane. With him around, my anger didn’t overtake me.
“What about if we made multiple tiny cuts all over his body, so he bled out slowly?” Tjard asked. “You could challenge him to a duel, and then I could—”
From the trees up ahead, I heard a sound. A voice, calling out for help.
I jerked my head up, scanning the forest for any movement. Below me, Willow came to a halt, her body instinctively picking up on my stiffness. Tjard froze, his hands yanking back the reins to pull Sycamore to a stop. I craned my neck, listening for the faint sound I had heard. There it was again. It was a woman screaming.
We should ignore it and keep on our path, for it wasn’t our business and keeping hidden was paramount to the success of our mission. But Tjard didn’t even have to ask me what we were going to do, wordlessly, we dismounted and tied the horses up, and darted into the trees, moving toward the source of the woman’s cries as quickly and quietly as we could. Tjard moved ahead of me, and parted some of the trees. He made a disgusted face, and gestured for me to look.
I peered through the hole Tjard had made in the bracken, and saw a sight that turned my blood cold. Two men wearing the characteristic black robes and hoods of the scharfrichter, had a woman pinned face down against a rock. A tall, skinny one held her legs down while the other – a heavy man with rolls of fat spilling out from the sleeves and collar of his robe – laid a whip across her back. Her pale skin was already latticed with red welts and nasty, bleeding wounds. The sound we’d heard was the woman sobbing.
As I watched, my body tensing, the fat scharfrichter drew the whip back, and laid a terrible wound right across the woman’s ass cheeks. She wailed as the leather bit into her skin, squirming against the rock in a futile attempt to escape.
“Now these pretty cheeks are all red with lust,” The fat scharfrichter said, stepping closer to her and fumbling with his breeches. “It’s time to take your punishment. Perhaps after this you’ll think twice before looking at a man of the law with lust in your eyes.”
The woman whimpered. The look in her eyes was one of utter defeat.
My blood boiled with rage. I had seen enough of this cruelty to last me a lifetime. I met Tjard’s gaze and he nodded. As silently as we could, we pulled our swords from their scabbards. I counted down off my fingers. Three … two … one …
With a roar, I leapt over the bush and rushed the two men. They were too surprised to react, staring at us with dumb faces as we bore down on them. I caught the fat one in the gut, my shoulder shoving him backward. The whip flew from his hand.
We staggered backward. I pulled my ankle behind his and dragged it forward, sending us both crashing against the rocks. I landed on top of him, heard a satisfying CRACK as the back of his head bounced against the stone. The scharfrichter reached out his fat fingers to grab my throat, but I managed to wrestle him down. It was too close quarters for me to use my blade, and I couldn’t let go of him to hit him without opening myself up, so I took a deep breath and slammed my head into his nose.
CRUNCH. The man howled as my skull shattered his cartilage. Blood exploded across h
is face. I let go of his hand, and he cupped it over his mashed face, trying in vain to stifle the bleeding. My hand now free, I drew back my fist and punched him in the jaw.
He whimpered as my fist collapsed the bone. I leapt off him, pulling my foot back in readiness. He tried to roll away from me, but he was in too much pain. He moved too slowly. I kicked him between the legs, feeling my boot connect with the collection of soft, dangly objects that resided there. Let that be a lesson to him about how to treat a lady.
While he moaned and slowly curled up like a hedgehog before a predator, I reached over and picked up my sword. I pointed the blade down at his throat. “Don’t move, or I’ll gut you like a fish.”
The fat man moaned in response, but he stopped moving.
Tjard came to stand beside me. He was panting. “What happened to his friend?” I asked him. Tjard inclined his head. Dead, then. That was fine.
“You killed a scharfrichter,” the fat man blubbered. “You’ll be hung, drawn and quartered for that crime.”
“Oh yeah?” Tjard kicked him in the gut. The man doubled over again, moaning as he clutched his stomach and gasped for air. His chin nicked the edge of my blade, and a trickle of blood flowed through his beard. “Then I guess it doesn’t matter if we add a second corpse to the pile, now does it? It’s not as if they can quarter us twice?”
“Remove his hood.” I said. I didn’t like to kill a blindfolded man.
Tjard bent down and pulled the fat man’s hood all the way off. Behind it his face was puffed up and caked in blood, his sandy hair matted to his head, his jaw on a strange angle. But I still recognized the face.
“Rulf the Wicked,” I said. “I remember you. You were my father’s favourite löwe when I was a boy. You have made quite a name for yourself now, it seems.”
“You!” the foul man gargled out, as realization dawned on his eyes. “Ulrich the Traitor, Ulrich the Enchanted. I might’ve known.”
“Oh, don’t be like that now.” I smirked, pressing the tip of my sword into the skin of his neck. “I thought we were getting on like old friends.”
“You have no friends left, traitor.” Rulf growled.
“Oh, I don’t know about that. Where is my father?”
“He’s disowned you publically. He’s not your father any longer, and I’ll tell you nothing, witch-friend.” Rulf tried to spit at me, but his jaw was so mashed that all he managed to do was dribble out the side of his mouth.
“Oh, but I think you will.” I used my boot to push his legs apart, and ground my boot into the space between them. Rulf howled, his body twitching with agony.
“Remember when you speak to me that no matter what my father has told you about me, no matter the rumours you have heard, there is only one truth that you should be concerned with: I am the son of Damon of Donnau-Ries. He raised me in the torture chamber and taught me everything he knows. I can make your death last for hours, days even. And out here, there’s no one who will hear your screams. So, I ask again, where is my father? Last I heard, he was riding to Rotstrom. But you know where he is now.”
I expected to have to cut Rulf a few times before he gave up the truth, but with a squeal he stuttered out what we needed to know. “I left him two days ago, and he was riding to Stuttgart. They’ve been hit badly by the plague, and Damon hopes to cleanse the area of witches before he meets Lord Benedict. There’s to be a mass trial and witch burning there in ten days’ time. They will burn a hundred heretics on a great pyre, and the land will be cleansed.”
“Thank you. You’ve been most co-operative,” I leaned forward, and pushed the tip of my sword through his throat. Rulf opened his mouth to cry out, but all that came out was a strangled gurgle. Blood bubbled up from the edges of the blade, spilling down the sides of his neck and staining the leaves beneath him. His eyes rolled back into his head, and as the life left him. I withdrew my sword, wiping the blood from the black with the edge of my cloak.
“I thought you were going to make his death last for days?” Tjard asked, as I wiped the blood off my blade with the edge of my cloak.
“He wasn’t pretty enough for my taste. Let’s get to work,” I said. Tjard nodded. We bent over the bodies and stripped the clothing, rolling up the cloaks and tying them to the backs of our saddles. They would come in handy if we needed a disguise. Tjard checked and cleaned their knives and swords, which we divided between us, while I moved their coil of rope, stores of bread and biscuits, and a skin of mead into our own bags.
What we’d just done wasn’t just a crime. It was much worse than that. Scharfrichters operated with divine sanction, as they wielded the hammer of God’s justice. In the eyes of the church, it was an act of sacrilege. We had killed two men of the law. In the eyes of the church, we had officially moved over to the side of the Devil.
It felt surprisingly good, all things considered.
“Look at this,” Tjard said, handing me a round, bronze amulet. It was threaded on a thin leather cord. I gazed at the seal on the amulet. It was stamped with a crest I’d never seen before: two swords crossed over a black serpent. “I found it around the fat one’s neck.”
“He’s got one, too.” Tjard bent over the other man and pulled off the amulet. I grinned at him, and we both tied the cords holding the amulets around our necks. I ran my fingers over the strange crest, wondering what it symbolized. Whatever it was, we had them now.
Now we had disguises, we could move more freely in the villages we passed. We would still need to be careful, but we could pass ourselves off as scharfrichters, and no one would want to question us for too long. Tjard grinned at me as he climbed back on Sycamore’s back. “Where do we travel now?”
I pointed north. “There’s a village just beyond that ridge,” I said. “It’s getting dark now. We can visit the tavern and try to find some more information about this plague outbreak. And in the morning, we head for Stuttgart.”
ADA
Ulrich had been gone now for twenty-four days.
Living without him was agony. At first I had been so fascinated by life in the Haven – so different from the rigid cycle of the village where I’d lived my entire life – that I had not had much time to think of him. He existed only as a dull ache in my heart. But now it had been so many days, and instead of fading in my mind, the memory of his touch, his eyes, and his smile grew stronger. When I went to sleep on my furs, the ghost of him warmed my flesh. As I walked with Maerwynn and Brunhild in the forest, hunting deer and rabbit with a beautifully-carved yew bow, I could feel his eyes boring into my back.
I worried about him constantly, walking around with my gut twisted in fear. What was he doing? Was he safe? Was he alive? Not knowing was almost worse than knowing something terrible. Almost.
“Is there any way we can see him?” I asked my aunts as I helped them to gut the fish another of the women had caught in the stream. “There must be some spell we can use to follow Ulrich's movements, at least to find out where he is?” And if he’s still alive.
Aubrey and Bernadine exchanged one of their knowing glances, and then slowly, Aubrey shook her head. “Magic doesn’t work like that,” she said. “To cross such a long distance, you would need to bind yourself to Ulrich with a special amulet. Now that he’s gone, there is no way to perform the binding. We cannot find him, I’m sorry Ada.”
“But couldn’t you send an animal to follow him, the way you used to do if you wanted news in the village?” Aunt Aubrey shook her head sadly, then went back to de-scaling the fish.
I knew she was lying. I gulped back a retort. I was getting tired of being lied to, and tired of having the truth hidden from me. After Aunt Bernadine’s talk, I had hoped things would be different, but it didn’t seem to be so. I was the one who’d nearly been burned at the stake, and now there was a reward out on my head. I deserved more than to remain in the dark.
“Very well,” I said frostily. I whirled around on my heel and stalked away from them. Aubrey called out my name, but I didn’t stop and I
didn’t look back. Instead, I went to sit with Brunhild and Ryia. Ryia had long hair the colour of straw that flowed down her back in tight ringlets, and a heart-shaped face with large eyes that made her appear almost permanently surprised. She was perhaps the most beautiful girl I had ever seen, and I couldn’t help but immediately dislike her. It wasn’t Ryia’s fault, for she was perfectly lovely. It was that seeing someone so beautiful reminded me of Rebekah, previously my only friend in the world, who had betrayed me.
“Is something wrong, Ada?” Ryia asked, as she passed me a horn filled with mead. We weren’t supposed to be drinking before the meal, but right then I didn’t care. I gulped back a huge mouthful of the sweet honey drink.
“It’s the same thing as always.” I growled. “My aunts still treat me as if I am a child, a precious little thing who will break like crystal at the slightest provocation. My love is in some far off land, fighting for our freedom, and they won’t even teach me a simple spell to figure out if he is still alive.” Brunhild had heard my rant before. She put her arm around my shoulders and gently nudged the mead horn higher, tipping more of the nectar down my throat.
“Your aunts don’t allow you to do magic?” Ryia looked confused. “But your Aunt Bernadine is famous. She was one of the most powerful witches of her age. Maerwynn says her own mother was once part of Bernadine’s coven.”
She was? Interesting. I hadn’t known that. I wondered if Maerwynn’s mother had been one of the witches in Bernadine’s story who had fled.
“Well, when it comes to guarding her magical secrets, she won’t even share them with her own niece. I’ve never even been properly initiated into their coven,” I said, wiping my mouth. My head buzzed from the sudden intake of alcohol. “Since my mother died giving birth to me, I think it was just assumed that I was the third witch. I’m pretty useless, though.”
Coven: a dark medieval paranormal romance (Witches of the Woods Book 2) Page 10
