by Dana Marton
I blinked hard at the captain’s generosity.
I sat on the tree stump in the middle of the tent and ate, just a few bites of bread and cheese. I had to save the rest.
Nobody came to see me, although I was sure there were some in camp who could have used my healing. A simple herb woman they might have approached, even a healer. But they were wary of a sorceress. I imagined tales of me were growing more and more exaggerated with every passing moment.
When night fell, I hung my sacks from my belt, then tied all three blankets around my shoulders as a many-layered cloak. I bundled up tightly, as if against the cold, then poked my head outside the tent.
Two men stood guard. I recognized both. I had treated them earlier, one of them the captain’s own son. They appeared weak and exhausted, but they bowed deeply when I stepped forward.
“I must relieve myself. In the woods.”
“There is a tiger in the woods, my lady,” the captain’s son said.
“The tiger will not hurt me.”
He nodded as if they had already heard that tale.
They escorted me out of camp but stopped short of the edge of the forest.
I kept on walking until I was well covered by the trees. Then I looked at the sky through the bare branches, filled my lungs with cold night air, and silently thanked Captain Witsel for setting me free.
I walked east by the stars. Here in the woods, there were no border markers as on the road. By the time I first stopped to drink, I estimated I was well on the other side of the border, inside the kingless kingdom of Seberon, Selorm land.
I was hoping that Marga and Orz would soon catch up with me. But a team of soldiers reached me first.
Chapter Nineteen
(A New Beginning)
Six men. On foot. Fast runners. Captain Witsel’s men. The two who had escorted me to the forest were not amongst them.
They surrounded me but did not draw their weapons, indeed the leader bowed his head with respect. “The captain sent us after you, Lady Tera.”
I stood still. Had I misunderstood the captain?
“We are Selorm,” the man said next.
That explained the lack of horses. The Selorm were foot soldiers for the most part. Their lords fought with battle tigers, and tigers scared even the bravest battle horses.
The man spoke again. “We heard that you wish to find Lord Karnagh.”
I nodded. “If I can.”
He shifted on his feet. “The captain said if we came to take you back but you enthralled us to go with you, we could not be blamed.”
The others looked at me warily, but also with hope, as if their lives depended on my answer. They had volunteered to go with me to Regnor, I suspected.
They knew the land better, and they probably knew Lord Karnagh better than I. The journey would be safer with their protection.
As I tried to think of what to say, the tiger chuffed somewhere behind them in the woods. I chuffed back to her.
A few moments later, she chuffed from much closer. And then she was there, walking out of the trees toward me. The men parted to allow her passage but showed little fear. They were Selorm, accustomed to tigers.
She merely sniffed in their direction, did not growl or bare her teeth. Maybe she smelled their lord’s battle tigers on their uniform, left from past battles.
She padded straight to me and rubbed her head against my cheek, nearly knocking me over. I had to slide an arm around her neck to steady myself. I was most relieved to see her.
When I looked up, the wariness was gone from the men’s eyes. Now all their gazes held were hope and excitement.
“Tigers do not bond with women,” their leader said. “You are a true sorceress.” He bowed again.
“It does not scare you?”
“You are a good sorceress. Tigers do not bond with an evil heart.”
I looked at the men, all of them nodding. I appreciated the vote of confidence—a welcome change from suggestions that I should be boiled in tar.
Marga sensed their ease around her and behaved accordingly, sniffing at them one more time, then ignoring them entirely, since I did not act as if they represented a threat. She chuffed toward the forest then.
I peered into the dark woods in that direction. Had she found a mate? I stiffened. Would her mate be as tolerant of people?
But when I finally saw movement, it wasn’t a flash of amber. Orz walked toward us, his black robe melting into the black woods around him. He wore the boots I had left him.
As easily as the soldiers accepted Marga, they froze at the sight of the hollow. They clumped together now, every hand on the hilt of a sword.
“His name is Orz,” I said, calmly, clearly. “He means no harm. He has suffered at the hand of the dark sorcerer of Ishaf.”
Marga moved from me to Orz and rubbed against him as she had rubbed against me earlier. I stared a little too, at that. She hadn’t done it before. Had they spent all this time together? Had she followed my scent and led Orz to me?
At the tiger’s full acceptance of Orz, encouraged that the hollow did not try to move toward them, the soldiers removed their hands from their weapons. But they still eyed the hollow with dislike and suspicion.
I filled my lungs. “If we are to travel together, we must have trust in each other.”
“My lady.” The young soldier addressing me bowed his head. “Do you not fear that it will suck out your spirit?”
“I do not.” Didn’t I?
Marga had just rubbed against him, and nothing happened to her. Marga most certainly had a spirit. Without it, she would not have responded to my spirit songs. Yet her spirit remained intact.
I needed three steps to reach Orz. I did not hesitate but a moment before I took his ill-shaped hand.
And gasped as something passed between us.
My head swam for a moment.
I pulled back. He drew nothing from me, and certainly not by force, but my healing powers responded to his battered body on instinct.
I looked at his bowed head as if seeing him for the first time, not that I could see much in the night forest.
Could I heal him?
Yet even as I reached for him again, he drew away. I had taken him by surprise the first time. He did not seem to want to be healed, or maybe he could not understand that I could help him with his pain.
Little by little, he raised his head at last. I held my breath, but as much as I tried to peer at his face, I could not see his features, for he stood in the deepest of shadows.
I would have given much for a torch or even a small candle just then.
At least I’d accomplished one thing. The soldiers relaxed. Seeing me touch the hollow and suffer no ill effects went a long way toward making them comfortable.
“Old wives’ tales,” I said firmly. Then, as Orz stayed out of my reach, I turned northward again and strode forward. “Let us walk until we find a suitable place to rest for the night. Mayhap we shall find water.”
We were in the thick woods, gnarly roots breaking the soil everywhere, no place for us to lie down to rest comfortably. We moved forward.
We stayed in the forest and did not go near the road as we headed north. We were now in a country at war. The road up ahead might be crawling with enemy soldiers who would kill us on sight.
The Selorm soldiers all gave me their names as we walked, and pledged themselves to my protection. Tomron was the oldest and their leader. He was Batumar’s age, strong in the arms and shoulders, his nose nearly flat after having been many times broken.
Fadden was a handsome youth, even younger than I, the only one who smiled as he talked. Baran was thick-waisted and thick-necked, a blacksmith before the war. Hartz was the strongest-looking of the six, his arms swollen with muscles.
Atter was missing both ears but made up for it by having the most melodious voice. I hoped he was a bard. I would have loved to hear him sing some Selorm stories. Lison spoke only his name, then gave a brief nod and fell back. He
talked to me no more nor to the others as we moved forward. He seemed to have a dark cloud over him, or maybe inside him.
They were all large men. Whereas Marga’s head was level with mine, it reached only to their chests. But despite their size, they walked silently through the forest, stealing forward in their leather boots as softly as the tiger.
“When did you last see Lord Karnagh?” I asked.
Tomron answered. “When he rode out from Regnor before the harvest. At first, when the enemy reached our lands, the Selorm lords gathered their tigers and their warriors to defend the border as one great army.”
He paused as if the words to come pained him. “But the Kerghi hordes overran us, my lady.” Then he added, “The Emperor has a sorcerer on his side, and the sorcerer has a horn. When blown, the sound drove half the tigers mad.”
He looked at me expectantly as he walked next to me, matching his stride to mine. On my other side walked Orz. We were following Marga, who glanced back at us from time to time, as if wondering what was so difficult about keeping up. The rest of the men fanned out behind us, watching for attack.
Tomron said, “At the sound of the horn, the battle tigers fell to the ground in pain. Some ran off and abandoned their lords in the middle of battle.” He glanced at me again.
Clearly, he wanted to know if I had heard of such a thing, and if I, being a sorceress myself, could somehow counteract this.
I would have to think about that. “Where did Lord Karnagh ride from Regnor?”
Tomron accepted that I wasn’t going to answer his unspoken question, and he answered mine. “When the battle on the border was lost, each lord drew back to his castle to defend his own.”
He gave a long pause that spoke of memories of dark times. “We drew back behind Regnor’s walls on Lord Karnagh’s orders. First we heard news of one castle falling after another. Then the enemy reached us, and we beat them back. They had the horn somewhere else. We slaughtered them. The fields around the castle ran red with blood, my lady.” His words brimmed with pride.
“And then?”
“Lord Karnagh decided to ride out and lift the siege from his neighbor Lord Brooker’s castle. He rode out with five hundred men and fifty tigers.” Tomron shook his head. “We waited for his return, but he did not come. Not one captain came back, not one tiger, not one man.”
“You?”
“I had been left behind to guard Regnor. When we had no news of Lord Karnagh in a full mooncrossing, I took a team of the most faithful men to find him, sixty of us.” He gestured at his friends. “The six you see here remain.”
We walked in silence for a moment before he continued. “We ran into a great enemy force. We could not go forward, and since the enemy surrounded Regnor once again, we could not go back. We awaited the night in the thick of the woods, then we crept down to the river. We hung on to bloated corpses and floated away.”
“Then came to Ker.”
“We wanted to find fighting men we could join,” he said heavily.
“What do you know of the warrior queen who holds the last free Selorm city?”
“Only what I heard from refugees. They say the enemy nearly had the city of Ralabon when the Queen of Habor showed up with her royal guard. She had been pushed out from her own land. She was looking for shelter, somewhere to regroup her warriors, walls they could retreat behind to defend themselves. She cut through the army outside Ralabon in a surprise attack, and her warriors joined forces with those defending the castle.”
I thought carefully as we walked. “Do you think Lord Karnagh might be in Ralabon, sealed in by the siege?”
But Tomron shook his head. “If a Selorm lord was present, the foreign queen wouldn’t be leading defense.” He paused. “Ralabon is to the east of Regnor, Lord Karnagh’s seat. He had marched west with his warriors, to Lord Brooker’s aid.”
“Then we shall go toward Brooker’s Castle ourselves.”
At once, Tomron protested that they had already tried that and could not get through enemy lines, but I pointed out that they had been a force of sixty men then; now we were but eight. Our small group had a much better chance of proceeding unseen.
Soon the forest thinned, and we came across a dip in the ground and settled into it for the night. What wind blew through the trees blew over the top of us. I had spent more comfortable nights, but our discomfort was bearable.
Despite having a tiger along, Tomron set sentries.
Marga sniffed around and made her noises. And, to my surprise, Orz was making some noises back, guttural, deep sounds that rumbled up from his chest. Almost as if they were talking to each other.
The tiger did not go off hunting. She must have hunted well and filled her stomach the night before, for her belly appeared still rounded.
I slept next to her for heat, the men under blankets, all in a bunch. I gave one of my blankets to Orz, who kept himself apart.
We rose at first light, ate sparingly, then pushed forward.
Tomron sent Fadden and Baran to check the road. The first enemy soldiers, or rather their deaths, were reported back in a short while. Fadden and Baran dispatched the three enemy scouts. The element of surprise had been on our men’s side.
The sun had long passed its zenith in the sky by the time we reached the first village, little more than a ruin. Most of the huts had been burned.
We saw no people, but some from the village must have survived, for the fallen had been buried. No decomposing bodies littered the streets.
“I met refugees on the road before Captain Witsel caught up with me,” I told Tomron. “They might have come from this very village.”
He stayed by my side but sent his men to spread out and check through the charred huts for things we might be able to use.
They returned empty-handed. “Stripped clean,” Atter reported.
Marga had been sniffing around the well but suddenly lifted her head and gave a warning growl.
“There are people at the edge of the woods up ahead,” Tomron said without looking that way.
I looked, but all I could see were yew bushes.
The tiger growled again.
Our small team pulled back to the middle of the main square, the men’s hands near their swords. But when the bushes began to move and people stepped out, they were not enemy soldiers.
I sang a spirit song to Marga to keep her by my side. Her ears twitched. She did not attack. She seemed to have an uncanny ability to sense whether I considered someone friend or foe. But her thick tail swooshed from side to side in the dirt.
A dozen villagers limped and staggered toward us, mostly older men and women, two little girls among them. They were of shorter stature and darker hair than my Selorm guards, cheeks sunk in, clothes torn and dirty. They seemed greatly cheered by the tiger.
“They are Seb,” Tomron told me under his breath. “From the native tribes of this land.”
“Is the war over?” the oldest of the women inquired in the same language that the refugees I had met on the road had spoken.
She had a bent back and a shuffling walk, her joints stiff with rheumatism, her thinning hair in a stringy bun at her nape—that disheveled, desperate look of those whose lives had been upended.
Tomron looked to me as if awaiting my response.
“Not yet, Grandmother,” I said, and stepped forward.
Marga moved with me, staying close, taking a protective stance.
The wide-eyed little girl who was hiding behind the old woman’s skirts peeped up. “Why does the tiger go with her?”
She probably expected Marga to be bonded to one of the Selorm men.
But before I could explain, Orz stepped from the ruins of a granary he’d lumbered into earlier. The villagers drew back at his dark figure as he came to stand beside me, his head deeply bowed as always.
Some of the women backed toward the woods, looking ready to disappear.
But Tomron pointed at me and said with his voice full of authority, “The Lady Ter
a is a high sorceress. The hollow is her servant.”
I was about to protest, but the fear was lessening on the gaunt faces around me, replaced by curiosity, then acceptance when I said, “His name is Orz. I did not create him, and I will not create others,” I added, in case they worried that I came to suck out people’s spirits for magic. “He will not harm you,” I finished.
Orz backed away and dropped his shoulders, dipped his head even more than usual, and I stifled a smile, for I knew he was trying to do his best not to appear threatening.
Men and women came to me and fell to their knees, some kissing my hands, others my boots. They gained such joy and encouragement from news of my sorcery that I decided to wait at least a short while before I disabused them of the notion.
Instead, I gestured around. “What happened here?”
The old woman spoke again. “The Kerghi came. The men they cut down; the women and girls they chained up to send back to the empire as slaves. The boys they took to be pressed into their dark army.”
Her eyes glazed over with grief. “Only those of us they left for dead escaped. We hid in the forest, but we do not dare light any fires. And we are all too slow to hunt, either too old or too injured.”
I asked them about the small group of refugees I had met on the road who gave Orz his boots, but they did not know a family like that. There must have been many other ruined villages.
“We are going to Brooker’s Castle to find Lord Karnagh,” I said. “But we would like to rest here. Do you have a camp we might share for the night?” I did not wish to stay out in the open in the village. The main road passed too close by.
The villagers led me forth with deep bowing and many smiles. The two young children each grabbed on to a bundle of herbs hanging from my belt, as happy as if they were somehow blessed by that small connection.
We did not have to go far to reach the camp. I would have walked past it if walking on my own, for they had only the least they required to keep living. They had no tents or huts here but slept in holes dug in the ground, which they covered with branches.
