Through our minds, I asked my horse if she’d been to our destination before. Her head perked up, ear twitching, the first sign she’d heard me. She informed me she hadn’t, but confirmed the rumors Rav’s inside man previously reported. No one traveled beyond Anjorri anymore.
Another couple hours went by before the horses started acting strange, spiking my anxiety in the oddly silent wood.
“What’s wrong?”I asked my mare.
“The forest…it seems angry. As if it’s warning us to stay away.”
Well that’s not ominous.
The other horses in front also stumbled, refusing to go any further. One soldier leading our party turned his horse aroundand circled beside me and the carriage Alba sat in. “This is where we’ll depart. You’ll continue heading north. Here’s your pack.” He gestured to another soldier who released a duffle bag that’d been strapped to his horse. It hit the ground with a thud.
“Dismount,” a soldier grunted, yanking the reins from my hands.
“Pleeease.” The scowl on this face told me he didn’t appreciate my bestowed lesson in manners. I slipped off my horse’s back and gave her a pat, mentally thanking her.
Another soldier pulled Alba from the carriage. She staggered, gazing around in worry and confusion. I appreciated the scathing glances she shot to each soldier that crossed her path.
“Remember the deal,” the lead soldier exclaimed, a not-so-subtle reminder that the lives of everyone I loved hung in the balance. He retrieved my bow and quiver from the carriage and tossed it off the road into the uneven brush so that I’d have to dig for it. I glared at their shrinking figures as they departed.
When I scrambled to collect my weapons, I raised the arrow and pulled the string taut. Through one open eye, I targeted the nearest soldier. I made the closest sound I could to the release of an arrow before lowering the pointed tip to the ground. As much as I’d love to target all those pieces of shit, I’d run out of arrows and then be run down by their swords. But in my head, I’d made a kill shot.
After a minute, the drum of hooves faded into nothing, and Alba and I stood in a mess of forest on a poorly maintained road.
“Stay with me until they get further away,”I said to Braxius. He echoed his agreement in my mind, the first I’d heard him in days.
“I can’t believe they did this,” Alba paced, fuming. I couldn’t blame her.
“I can.” Bending over to pick up the bag of supplies and my quiver, I tossed them over my shoulder. I held my bow by thewood, letting it hang lazily at my side.“Taja putting the lives of magically blessed on the line for his own personal gain? Sounds about right.” I didn’t have the strength to get worked up over it. Instead, I merely started walking north.
“Feels weird here,”Braxius said.
“I agree.”There was a strange tension in the forest, a string pulled so taut it didn’t have any flexibility. A living forest breathes, welcomes all of its existence and parts. Here, it held its breath, on edge over anything that moved among it. I now understood why the horses had freaked out. With a group, that unnerving invisible fog hadn’t been as noticeable. Now that only the three of us remained, the feeling was more prominent.
Maybe that’s why the townspeople in the middle of Windguard fled, maybe they felt this unnatural creeping strangeness. That, in combination with this mysterious group I was sent to investigate, wouldn’t create a sense of comfort.
Infiltrate, Taja had said. Not something I hadn’t done a dozen times before, so as much as it made me sick to consider benefiting that horrible, gluttonous man in any way, it was a relatively easy price to pay. He could have had my head rolling in the public square three days ago.
I was surprised he hadn’t, actually, especially knowing I possessed magic. A pathetic magic, he didn’t mind pointing out. Perhaps he thought it so foolish there was no way it could be used against him.
I wish I’d taken the chance to tell him that the filth-covered rats living in his castle found him appalling. Flea infested, disease ridden rodents took one look at that man and felt disgust. Clever rats.
A mischievous smile stamped my face while we walked in silence and I imagined ways I’d ensure I didn’t miss that opportunity again. But that could only happen after survivingwhat he sent me here to do, a task my confidence waned over with each daunting step.
Braxius would leave soon to warn the others that the King of Windguard knew of Rahana’s whereabouts and had his eyes set on their destruction. Perhaps we’d join the refugees of Argora Vale in their new settlement, or in another city that Nick and Nora could provide. Something had to happen to get us out of Taja’s clutches.
A shiver ran down my spine over the fact that I was actually serving the hateful, murderous man. With each step, I had to remind myself of the faces I was protecting. The families back at camp. The children. My friends.
When I questioned what my mother and father would say about me returning to these lands in the fashion I had been, and what it now led to, I dammed up my thoughts. I focused on the sound of twigs crunching beneath my feet on the tired path, the occasional flutter of a falling leaf that canopied overhead. Alba struggled to keep my pace, huffing and panting with sporadic grunts of annoyance, but I didn’t slow my steps.
The soldiers said the well-traveled paths would eventually run out, and our task lay further north beyond that. As long as this road remained in sight, I knew we were too far away. Too far to locate the group we sought, scope out information and return to our people in a comfortable timeframe. Honestly, none of this was comfortable. Each day that’d passed on our journey up here made me uneasy, anxious to return home.
“When can we stop?” Alba asked from behind, and only then did I realize evening was quickly falling upon us.
With that, I noticed the angry throb in my feet, and how dry my mouth had become. Still, the road remained visible, stretching ahead for an unknown amount of miles. For the first time since being deserted by the soldiers, I stopped.
Surrounded by woods that remained eerily tense and silent, I grappled with the fact that our progress for the day had already ended. Alba cried in pain as she fell to the ground. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and a lump formed in my throat. I’d been so dead set on our mission that I hadn’t stopped to consider I might be pushing her too hard. Before a few days ago, I didn’t think she’d traveled as far as The Serpentine Line since she’d fled Windguard years ago.
I dropped the pack from around my shoulders, my muscles screaming in relief over the abandoned weight. “We have some rations we can use for dinner. Braxius and I will scout the perimeter, see if there’s a protected clearing nestled within the trees, then we’ll set up for the night.”
