We were a grim bunch as we fell back to the west, leaving Saric, Rina, and Asher Stewardson serving as our rearguard—the latter of this unlikely trio attaching himself to the task with an adamant insistence that “we not force the womenfolk to bear our burdens overmuch.” This declaration drew amusement from Rina and Saric, who I privately believed did not fully understand the implications, and was rather less popular among the rest of us, but he was an able and willing volunteer. Rina accepted him upon Saric’s plea that he be included, if only for the benefit of making her laugh.
The remainder of our force withdrew in a brittle silence.
For some time we had been bearing southeast, and now the Forest grew older and more foreboding with each step westward. The space between trees increased apace, their trunks taller, and despite the blinding light of the sun, the air felt colder. Despite these ill feelings, we followed the paths deeper into the woods until our western scouts called a sudden halt.
The Teague firearm remained on my back, but now I was wishing I had exchanged it for a bow. Far from the threat of assault by men in full armor and coats of plate, out in the forest, such a weapon would do little more than announce our presence like a town crier.
I approached the front of our line with the useless weapon clanking in its sheath. Sedec stood at the fore, one hand upraised to call a halt in the druid’s sign that I was beginning to recognize meant danger.
He rose to his feet, staring into the forest. The sun dimmed momentarily, dampened by a cloud that passed overhead like the sails of some seafaring vessel of legend.
I followed his gaze.
Winter trees had gaunt branches, and many of their boughs were gilded with ice and snow. The pines scattered through this stretch of forest were thickest with it, but though this coat of brilliance might have been speculated to lend more illumination, as I stood by the thin druid and stared west, I felt an inexplicable thrill of fear. The cloud passing overhead felt interminable, and the gloom beneath the distant trees seemed to cling like treacle.
Grannine. What do you see?
“I’m not…sure,” Grannine said, Her voice right at my ear. Her hand landed on my shoulder, and I felt Her at my back, looking west with the rest of us. “I don’t see anything. But…”
“Ve berem,” Sedec murmured. He touched the sigil hanging from his neck. “We go no further here.”
“What is it?”
“Fuck.” Dermot had reached the front of the line at last, and was looking forward into the forest. “Old place?”
“Yes.”
“Think we can camp here?”
Slowly, Sedec looked from side to side. He pivoted back, looking the way we had come as though reluctant to put his back to the west.
“Here, maybe. No further.”
“Good enough. At least we know Scarlet won’t come at us that way.” He turned, caught my eye. “Mariead, let’s have a stop here.”
Asking me. Why? That I might be seen giving the order. Realization followed even as I was turning to face our oncoming column. Leadership.
“Everyone,” I called. “We’ll hold here. Go no further past this point.”
“There,” Dermot pointed over my shoulder, past me, to the gnarled roots of a monumental tree. An old dolmen stood overgrown among the tangle, half-buried in snow. “Dig in there, lads and lasses. Use hands if you have to, but get down to the dirt. Make sure there’s no pits or tunnels into the roots.”
“Dermot.” I caught his sleeve as he started past. “What is it?”
“It’s probably nothing.”
“Sedec doesn’t think it’s nothing.” The druid glanced at me upon hearing his name. He and Dermot exchanged glances, and without a word, Sedec strode away to rejoin the others. “Dermot.”
“Bad luck to talk about them.” He lowered his voice.
“Dermot.” I let go of his arm. “Please. I’m not a child to be frightened away by hearthfire stories.”
“You ask me, Sedec’s too cautious. I’d have pushed further west. But it feels like a place where something old has been.”
“The old hunters used to say something walks the paths. That they aren’t kept clear just by animals.” Despite my protestation, I did feel a chill as I uttered the words. It would be a mistruth to say that such stories had not been close to mind during the deeper hours of the night, particularly in the silence of winterdeep where the only sounds were sudden ones. Such things were far easier to dismiss as the drunken stories of old woodsmen when the Forest was held back by the walls of a mansion, and the winter wind came no further to hand than a groaning among the rafters.
“We stay west of here, we won’t have to find out.”
I noticed Dermot’s hand was on the hilt of his sword.
“Sir Slate,” I said. I saw the flicker of confusion, recognition, reaction, as he heard the title. “If it becomes imperative that I know more of this, you will inform me.”
“Fuck’s sake, Mariead.” He chuckled. “Couldn’t just say ‘tell me later,’ could you?”
“Will you?”
“I will. I think we’ll have the night.”
“You’ll tell me how you recognized it, as well.” I looked past him to the Forest again. I had the haunting feeling that I was missing something, looking past something. In the forest north of Saint Isaac’s, I had played huntress more than once when stores went thin in winterdeep. In the white and silent ubiquity, I had at times found myself staring straight at a coney, a ptarmigan, even once a lynx, without recognizing the presence of a living thing that was staring straight back at me.
Their sudden and startled flight always precipitated a unique flash of terror. I felt the premonition of such fear here. I did not think I would need to ask again what it was Dermot had seen in the Forest.
Grannine. We’ve called you a demon, do you…know of this? Are these kin to you?
“If they are, they’re no kin that I know,” Grannine murmured. She and Dermot flanked me, their attention split, east and west. “It’s strange…I see what you see, and I feel the fear it brings in you…but there’s none of that for me. Whatever it is that’s out there, I can’t tell.”
That thought was deeply unsettling. I shoved it away.
We returned to the others. They were excavating a hollow among the roots of the tree, probing down into the snow. Sedec, Talvec, and Sadepa had cut saplings and were sounding at the edges of our ever-expanding camp, seeking outward.
“Lady Mariead,” Lyn Dorsey said, upon our approach.
“Lyn. How might I be of service?”
“I don’t suppose I could change your mind?” Lyn cast a skeptical look up and down Dermot. “You and the men riding off to have a fight?”
“Speak for yourself. I’m hoping to do no fighting at all.” Dermot was unintimidated and unimpressed by the dour opinion communicated in Lyn’s look.
“Fifteen men you’re planning to kill. It was one thing when we were trying to get away, but…” she struggled for a moment to articulate her thought. “Saint Isaac says mercy is a virtue.”
“Saint Isaac was trying to preserve lead,” Dermot muttered, stooping to brush snow from a root. He sat down with a groan like a man of eighty.
“That does not make mercy less virtuous.”
“Lyn,” Miles Fenson straightened up in the midst of clearing a patch of snow. Where Lyn Dorsey had spoken softly, he did not restrain his voice; each word rang out as though he were attempting to convince us in sum and individually. “I don’t much care for it myself, but these aren’t men. These are convicts. Penitents! Murderers and rapists. The blackest hearts of Frydain, bound to service for their sins.”
Blake Bauldry made a noise that one could have mistaken for a cough. Anne Pace cast a quick, furtive look at Cassius. He grinned and tapped the chains embroidered on his sleeve.
“Murderer,” he said.
“Let’s not make it complex,” Dermot said idly. “If we don’t kill them, we’ll be worse off.”
“We might still be.”
A call trilled through the forest. One of the perching birds, the inquisitive call of a chickadee.
Talvec raised a hand to his mouth and answered with an exquisite mimicry. Moments later, Saric emerged from the undergrowth a hundred paces to the south, moving in our direction as though loosed from a bow. Her usual merry expression was shrouded like the sun overhead.
“Nash,” she called, as she came. “The Or—the Speaker walked me on. Mariead Lady-dae, everyone, come.”
“Bad news?” Eris had only just unslung her pack with a groan. She stood up again out of the snow at Saric’s approach.
“Yes. Fedxir was right to say they are clever. They walk far apart in the forest, but not too far to be seen two for two.”
“Blast,” Aidan murmured. He had not partaken of the act of clearing the camp, but stood to one side, resting his hands on Tensil. I thought, momentarily, of remonstrating him and asking him to join in, but the time for such things seemed to have passed us by. “A marching line would be a devil of a thing to ambush.”
“I don’t think we have the numbers,” Eris looked around our group. “Raise your hand if you’re for staying behind with Sedec here?”
Seven hands were raised. Stern, salt-and-pepper Lyn Dorsey offered me a look that was almost apologetic as she led the movement. Deiter Black, Killian, the careworn Freya Tucker, Aidan Whitesmith, and the young Pace couple joined in.
“That leaves,” Eris’ lips moved for a moment as she counted.
Seventeen, I thought.
“Sixteen,” Eris said. “We’d have to be absolutely perfect. One man gets away in either direction…”
“Might not be the end of us if a man gets away to the north. He finds the Templar…”
“If Duncan brings his men south again before we’ve finished, we’ll be caught between him and the caravan. Hammer and tongs.” Aidan mimed striking a blow with a flick of his wrist. “I mislike allowing them the chance to set up a camp, but it might be the only time they are together.”
“Yous mislike things an awful lot. Don’t suppose there’s anything you like?”
“Congratulations, Sir Slate,” Aidan’s tone to Dermot was drier than the frigid air around us. “You have made me regret agreeing with you.”
“Called me sir, though.”
“Merciful God, who watches over us in our endeavours,” Aidan said. “Give me strength.”
“That’s it, then,” I said. This conversation is wanting a conclusion. “It will be a midnight sortie after all.”
“Best to wait closer to dawn,” Cassius said. I still could not quite place his accent. “I know I always want to do fuck all but sleep before dawn.”
“Worst watch to take,” Sergeant Bauldry agreed.
“Won’t that be when they’ll expect us, though?” Eris asked. Dermot, Cassius, and Blake Bauldry looked at her. Her shoulders narrowed. “If it’s the worst watch and the best time for an ambush…shouldn’t we come for them just after nightfall, in the gloaming?”
I could not see all of the men at once. It was Miles Fenson, of all people, who occupied my whole attention for the fleeting moment that passed over our group, as his face shifted. I knew the expression well. It was the face of a man coming to realize for the first time how fiendishly clever my Eris was.
“Even if they’re woodsmen all,” she continued, encouraged by the silence. “Even if they’re setting watches and…could they set out stakes in this weather? Or is it too cold?”
“They could,” Dermot said.
“Well! They’d still be in the middle of doing it.”
Dermot sucked air in through his teeth. Aidan nodded.
“Nightfall,” Aidan said.
“Fine by me. Might get some sleep after.” Dermot rose to his feet. “Lady Mariead, marching order?”
“Yes.” The question had caught me off-guard. I scrambled after my thoughts. “Something to eat first, I think. We’ll need our strength for the evening. We’ll decamp together and meet our rearguard after to see what other news our scouts bring.”
The words felt dreamlike. Scouts and troop movements! History books on the ebb and flow of ages spoke of such things. Treatises on the actions of kings and queens of Frydain since the birth of Queen Frydda herself. I was living the tales I had devoured as a girl.
A sobering thought followed.
The histories allowed by the Church. There will be no book for us. No printing-press at Raven Lake, and no manor to store them in.
Only survival. Or oblivion.
I felt another chill that had nothing at all to do with the Forest.
*
2.5.3 – Plans Awry
BLANK SLATE 
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