by J. K. Barber
“Mala!” Branden admonished. “How can you even think of endangering her like that again?”
The older woman raised her hand, opening her palm to the blacksmith. “I am not trying to put anyone in danger, friend. I am simply trying to explore all our options. We need to get to the King as quickly as possible. If Katya could transport us there the way that she traveled to the Bloodwood...”
“Blodwood,” Chyla corrected.
“Yes, Blodwood,” Mala continued. “If there is a quicker way to travel to Aeirsga, then we are duty-bound to take advantage of it.”
“But not at the expense of my daughter’s life!” Branden admonished the swordmistress.
“No, of course not,” Mala continued calmly. “But any and all avenues have to be explored.”
“This is a moot point anyway,” Jared said, finally standing up from his chair. Jugger stood and moved next to the hunter, nonchalantly regarding the assembled people in the room. “Katya said she does not know how she traveled the way she did. We need to look at other ways to get to the capital.”
“Mistress Mala,” Talas said. “You hold an officer rank in the King’s Army, do you not?”
“Yes,” the older woman said, seeing where Talas was leading. “I do have the authority to commandeer horses for us. However, we could not ride the horses as fast as we would have to, for as long as we would have to, without killing them.”
“Could not word be sent to meet us at certain waypoints with fresh horses so that we could continue with haste?” Talas inquired.
“I don’t see how. Letters would have to be sent and the letters wouldn’t be traveling any faster than we would.”
“But they could,” Jared chimed in. “Wings fly faster than a horse’s legs run. We could send carrier birds with notes, arranging for fresh horses to be brought to certain locations. The birds would be traveling straight through the countryside and not along the Tradeways.”
“We would have to find birds that are specifically trained to return to each of the posts between here and the capital.” Branden answered. “Even if that were likely, which it’s not, the time that it would take to find these birds would delay us enough to make it impractical,”
“Unless,” Sasha added, “we didn’t use normal birds. The Nhyme have already proven themselves able to take the form of a bird.” All the eyes in the room looked to the Nhyme, as they sat on their pillow on top of the desk. “If we gave them the notes and sent them to the posts, then the horses could be brought to where we would need to pick them up.”
Chyla looked terrified and said, “I don’t… I don’t know if I can do that again.” The young Nhyme girl hugged her knees to her chest. “I almost died getting this far. I was supposed to go all the way to Snowhaven to find you two,” she inclined her head towards Branden and Mala. “I wasn’t going to make it. It was only through pure dumb luck that you all were here.”
“The Great Mother’s hand guides us in our darkest hours,” Talas intoned, an odd mix of reverence and gentle lecture blending in his voice. Mala and Branden gave Talas an odd look. Sasha and Jared smiled along with Katya, who was envisioning the balding, battle worn man wearing a long priest’s robe.
“However you were brought here,” Mala said to Chyla, “the fact remains that for this plan to work, we need those horses to be ready and waiting for us. You’re the only one who can get the message through fast enough.”
“She’s not the only one,” Niko said, sliding from the pillow to stand proudly on the desktop. “I can fly just as well as she can,” the winged man said defiantly. Katya saw Chyla relax her hold on her legs, and the hint of a smile played across her features.
“No,” Chyla said, her face sobering. “That would be too dangerous. You can’t go alone.”
“Then we can go together,” Niko said. “Come on, it’ll be fun!” He reiterated his statement by turning into a familiar looking black crow and began hopping around the desk.
Katya rose and walked over to the desk, kneeling down so that she would be on level with the young Nhyme girl. “Chyla, if Niko went with you, would you please be willing to do this for us?” Niko continued hopping around the desk cawing enthusiastically.
“I… I suppose so,” Chyla said quietly, fear still evident on her face. Niko took off from the desk in a flurry of black wings and flew towards the closed door. Realizing it was still closed, he circled the room cawing loudly. Jugger jumped to his feet and barked at the crow.
Jared grabbed Jugger’s collar and shook it once. “Quiet, boy,” the hunter commanded, “Sit!” The huge bull mastiff stopped barking and sat down immediately, his large head still swiveling about to follow the crow around the room.
“Niko!” Katya admonished. “Get down here.”
The crow took one more trip around the room before landing on the desk, resolving back into the shape of the brown-haired Nhyme. “What?” Niko asked, impatience plain in his voice.
“We have to write the letters first,” Katya replied, unable to keep a hint of laughter out of her voice.
“Oh, right,” Niko said.
“Here, have some more cheese, you’ll need your strength,” the young sorceress said, knowing it would keep the capricious mind of the Nhyme occupied while they finalized their plans. As she anticipated, Niko popped another cube of cheese into his mouth and began munching happily.
“Right,” Mala said, capturing the attention of all the humans in the room. “I’ll go talk to the postmaster here in town and see if he has any spare horses. If that doesn’t pan out, I’ll go commandeer some mounts from the Trades Guild.”
“You can do that?” Jared asked, an obvious tone of incredulity in his voice.
“Oh yes,” Mala said. “They won’t be happy about it, but they can’t really refuse. Besides, they know they’ll be handsomely compensated for it… eventually.” Mala turned towards Sasha where she sat on the arm of the chair in which Katya had recently sat. “I’m afraid we’ll have to leave Hoarfrost behind.”
Sasha rose to her feet. “But…” the young swordswoman started to say.
“I’m sorry,” Mala interrupted, “but Hoarfrost is a warhorse not a distance runner, and besides, even if she was, we’d have to leave her the first time we changed horses anyway.” The swordmistress placed a hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, I know a certain General, who would be more than happy to take care of her while we’re gone. She’ll be in good hands, Sasha. I promise.”
“Good, we’re settled then,” Jared stated. Katya stood and regarded the hunter, who wore an expression similar to that of an animal that had been kept too long in his crate, anxious to be let out. “Katya and Mala, you write your notes and take care of the horses,” Jared nodded his head towards the rest of his companions. “Everyone else, get your gear ready for travel. I assume we’ll want to leave in the morning, as opposed to immediately, to give Niko and Chyla time to reach the people that note is going to?”
“She’ll need some time to rest,” Katya replied, indicating the young Nhyme girl.
“Of course,” Jared replied. “How much time does she need?”
“If I go to sleep now, which shouldn’t be all that hard…” Chyla said with an understandable amount of weariness in her voice, “I can get up an hour before dawn, have gotten enough sleep, and still be several hours ahead of you.”
“Great,” Jared said taking several steps towards the door to his room.
Branden eyed the retreating hunter a moment before asking, “And what are you going to do?”
“I’m going to go get some fresh air,” Jared stated. “It’s too crowded in here.” That said, the hunter slid the bolt on his door, opened it, and then closed it behind him as he left.
Chapter 31
Sasha flopped exhausted onto the bedroll in her tent. A week had passed since they had left Binford’s Bluff, and the pace was taking its toll on everyone. Having changed horses twice already, they had met up with another group of the King’s Army, just
as they were camping for the night. The soldiers supplied them with remounts and some badly needed food. Surviving for a week on nothing but trail rations had begun to wear on the twins’ stomachs also. Their rapid pace had not allowed time for Jared to hunt, and the salted beef and stale bread were a poor substitute for freshly killed rabbit or venison. Fortunately, the soldiers, who had been sent to meet them, had the time to bring down a deer while they had waited.
Jared had taken the meat and begun making a stew, to which he applied his usual liberal amount of seasoning. The wonderful aroma of the cooking food wafted into the tent she shared with Katya and her mouth began to water. Regardless of her reservations about the hunter, the man definitely knew how to cook.
It looked like they would make it to Aeirsga in another three days. Their plan of sending the Nhyme ahead with letters requesting fresh horses had worked well. It had taken some careful wording to make sure that the Nhyme, in bird form, were released again once their communications had been delivered, but the two little-winged folk seemed none the worse for wear, after their brief moments in human captivity. Exhausted as well, the tiny people were asleep atop Katya’s pillow, undisturbed by Sasha’s collapse next to them.
Sasha had rested for perhaps half an hour before she heard her sister’s voice at the tent flap telling her that dinner was ready. Painfully levering herself up, the swordswoman scooted out of the tent before standing fully upright. As she did she felt the pain of sore muscles shoot through her legs and back. Stretching with a small groan, she lumbered over to the campfire, gratefully accepting the offered camp chair of one of the soldiers, who couldn’t have been more than a couple winters older than she was. Little more than a rectangle of wood that rested atop three crisscrossing wooden legs, the small stool was a welcome change from a saddle. The same solider handed her a steaming bowl of stew and a wooden spoon, a smile on his face. The young man may have been flirting with her, but she was too tired to care. Under other circumstances, she may have welcomed the attention, but now only her basic needs demanded her notice: food and then sleep.
As the stew settled into her stomach, Sasha looked around the campfire. Her father sat on a log he had drug over to the fire, the weariness evident in his posture and eyes. Sasha could not recall a time when her father had looked so tired… or old. She saw him in a new light that had nothing to do with the campfire they now shared. Her father had always been Branden the smith, an unmovable hillock of a man, who quietly plied his trade in Snowhaven. It was joked, not within his hearing of course, that it was easier to bend one of Branden’s swords with your bare hands than it was to change his opinion on a matter, once he had made up his mind. Sasha, who knew him well, could attest to the truth of the sentiment. The only person who could make the smith change his mind had been his wife, Sasha’s mother. Dara was gone though, and Sasha saw the toll that had taken on her father.
Branden now seemed somehow smaller and almost foreign to Sasha. He had never shared with his daughters that he had once been a member of the King’s Guard, the most prestigious and honorable position that a soldier could occupy. He was supposedly sworn “to speak only that which is true.” He had technically told the truth, since his daughters had never asked him if he had ever been in the King’s Guard, but Sasha couldn’t help but feel that she had been lied to her entire life about who this man was that was her father. The fact that Mistress Mala knew about Branden’s former post only served to twist the knife a little more. Sasha felt that she barely recognized the man, who sat by the fire before her, the man whom she had called Daddy as long as she could remember.
Sasha let her gaze, and her thoughts, slide along to her other companions. Sitting on the ground and leaning his back against the same log, on which her father sat, was Talas. There was another man whose present did not match with his past. Talas, once part of the King’s Army and now a sellsword, had once been a priest in the Temple of the Great Mother. If the rumor was true, he was seriously considering joining the priesthood once again. Sasha had never met a priest in person before, but she just couldn’t imagine the grizzled old man, older than even her father, in the green and white robes of the Mother, presiding over births, marriages, and the Mother knew what else. She imagined the loquacious old man, with his bald pate, taking a vow of silence, as some priests did. She couldn’t suppress a grin. A vow of celibacy she could see Talas being able to handle, but a promise to never speak again would probably make the old man’s head explode.
This was evidenced by the fact that he was engaged in conversation with Mistress Mala, who sat cross legged next to him, speaking around mouthfuls of stew. They seemed to be having a rather spirited debate, regarding tactics and deployment of troops within a city. Even had she been fully rested, the conversation couldn’t have interested Sasha less. The young swordswoman grimaced to think of the tongue-lashing she would have received from Mala had the older woman been able to hear her thoughts. Mistress Mala had often reprimanded Sasha for not paying attention, when the Master Swordswoman had spoken of strategy and tactics.
“What does it matter if the right flank hundreds of yards away had to redeploy, if I can’t handle the man that is inches away from the tip of my sword?” Sasha would ask, to Mistress Mala’s continuing frustration.
“And what does it matter if you handle the single man in front of you, if you suddenly have hundreds of men flanking you from the right?” Mala would reply. “If you hope to be a leader of men someday, Sasha, you have to be able to look at the battle as a whole, even, and especially, while dealing with the single soldier who stands before you.”
Sasha heard the woman’s voice in her head, as she saw Mistress Mala speaking with Talas about choke points and civilian populations. She had trusted the swordmistress her entire life, but there was something different about her now. She had kept her father’s secret for years, and it colored Sasha’s impression of Mistress Mala. The older woman seemed somehow more sinister, more feral. Sasha could not quite place her finger on what was different. Perhaps Sasha’s mother’s death had affected Mala more deeply than Sasha knew. She knew how much her mother’s death hurt, and she had not had a chance to fully mourn herself. Branden seemed to notice something as well. Sasha caught her father casting sideways glances at Mistress Mala, when the woman was not looking. The expression on the smith’s face was a wary one but otherwise unreadable.
Sasha pulled her mind away from that train of thought. Eventually, she would have a conversation with her father, regarding his past, but now was not the time or place. She let her gaze travel around the faces surrounding the fire, passing lazily over the soldiers that had met them, until her eyes came to rest on perhaps the most secretive of all her traveling companions… Jared.
The hunter was having a discussion with Katya, which seemed to revolve around fungus or plants. Sasha couldn’t tell, nor did she really care. The topic of herbalism interested her even less than another lecture on tactics and strategy from Mistress Mala, but, for some reason, Sasha’s attention remained on the mysterious woodsman and her twin. She knew little of the man, other than his skill at woodcraft and that he preferred to travel alone. The traits were at odds with how quickly he had seemed to assimilate himself into a group of travelers, which was mostly made up of family and lifelong friends. Katya certainly seemed to enjoy his company.
Sasha paused at that thought. Now why does that bother me so much? She thought. Why do I care if Jared and Katya are talking and getting along? It’s not like he and I were going to… Sasha shook her head to clear it of whatever idea was bothering her about her sister and Jared. The hunter looked up from the various packets of dried leaves and mold in his hand, as if he had heard what Sasha had been thinking. Sasha looked plainly at Jared’s face and immediately shoved another spoonful of stew into her mouth, raising the bowl towards him with a stupid look of approval on her face. Jared smiled at the compliment and then went back to his conversation with Katya.
Sasha began wolfing down her stew, trying
not to notice the way that Jared’s eyes occasionally wandered to the neckline of her sister’s robes. The mantle that Katya had worn before for warmth had been set aside. Spring had fully arrived to the plains north of the Bloodwood, so Katya had discarded the silver embroidered hood that marked her as a fully trained sorcerer. She had also set it aside in order to keep it clean for their impending audience with the King.
Sasha looked down at her own body, noticing the differences between her and her twin. Having never gone through the rigorous physical training that she had, Katya’s body retained a slightly more feminine shape. Why am I so upset by this? Sasha asked herself. We’ve always looked this way, so why does it bother me now? A giggle from Katya hooked Sasha’s attention once more. She looked over to see Katya briefly place a hand on Jared’s leather clad knee at a shared joke. Both Jared and Sasha stiffened. Then she knew. Great Mother, am I… jealous? Sasha thought.
Sopping up the last of her stew with a bit of bread, Sasha stuffed it into her mouth and set her bowl aside. Without a word, she stood and strode back to her tent. Flopping down onto her bedroll, she woke the sleeping Nhyme on the pillow beside her.
Niko grumbled awake. “Huh… wha?” he said, as he rubbed his eyes. He looked over to where Chyla had been sleeping beside him and colored immediately. The young Nhyme girl looked up at Niko as he shuffled away, a similar blush spreading across her tiny features.
“Dinner’s ready,” Sasha mumbled into her pillow, as she rolled over onto her side to face away from the Nhyme and her sister’s bedroll. “I think they have cheese,” she added after a moment’s pause.
Both Niko and Chyla were instantly on their feet, their discomfort from before quickly forgotten. Jumping down from Katya’s pillow, Niko and Chyla adopted the form of crows and hopped out of the tent.
Sasha took several deep breaths, relaxing the muscles of her body and let her exhaustion carry her into a dreamless sleep.
