Chapter 32 #2
At least they put her on a horse when they set out the next morning.
It wasn’t Copper. This horse was taller and didn’t have as smooth a gait.
Copper carried Sol, who’d apparently woken up enough to vouch for her before setting off with the medic’s apprentice for Sulen.
She’d thought his support would clear everything up with the captain, but it had not.
She was heading back toward the nest, like it was the center of some kind of evil whirlpool that kept pulling her in.
She wanted to go home. She wanted a hot meal and a clean bed and her small world back where witches weren’t even real and every breath didn’t stink of rot.
Where her body didn’t ache like an old woman’s and her heart didn’t sit like a dead weight in her chest, locked up with dread that Casrian was out there right now fighting the witch with only half a patrol.
How did he do this year after year? It was awful.
Especially when he didn’t need to. He was a baron with a townhome and a country estate. Surely he could find something better to do with his time.
Lord Dain…
She laughed, and the soldier next to her darted an uneasy look her way. She was still wearing irons. The captain hadn’t said so directly, but he was treating her like an accused witch. They were exactly like the manacles her mother had worn at her trial. It was her blackest nightmare come true.
And this place—the darkening sky, the damp and the cold, the yellow fog stirring beneath the horse’s hooves, the feeling of being watched pressing in on all sides now—she hated it.
The trees still whispered to her, but now the whispers were dark and oily. Captain Shaw followed the map, forcing his way right through the woods, not even trying to avoid the trees that were taken by rot.
The fog never left them even as the morning sun rose toward midday.
It spilled over the stream banks and crept along the forest floor, limiting sight.
The stink of rot grew stronger. The trees here looked sickly.
The bark sloughing off like diseased skin, leaving some kind of slimy black fungus growing on the smooth wood that was white as bone.
As they drew closer to the river, they were swarmed by small, biting insects. At first she tried swatting them away, but with the chains on her hands it was an exhausting and dangerous endeavor. She gave up in the end and just sat there, hoping the dried mud on her skin poisoned them all.
Turkey vultures flew overhead. Unnaturally large, they slowly circled above the woods, one of them occasionally sinking down to disappear into the trees.
There was an infestation of large, flat-backed insects on the forest floor.
She caught flashes of their glossy shells every once in a while until it made her queasy and she stopped looking for them.
She couldn’t tell if it was dry leaves or the insects that crunched beneath the horse’s hooves.
She hardly recognized the place. Toby and his father would be appalled. It was like the woods had died and left behind this slowly rotting corpse. Another shudder racked her body, and this time she didn’t think it had to do with the cold.
They weren’t far now.
She kept looking up, thinking she should be able to see the old fort at any moment. But then, if they were that close, Casrian must have reached the fort yesterday. Where was he? There was no sound of fighting. No sound of anything at all. Just a dead, echoing silence.
If they’d killed the witch, the woods wouldn’t still feel like this. The trees would know, and they would tell her it was safe again.
There was still that itch between her shoulder blades. The lifted hair on her neck. The pressure in the air like the moment before a lightning strike.
It didn’t feel like a place that had been cleansed. The woods here felt alive and malevolent, like a hungry creature stalking its next meal.
A distant shout rent the air. She startled at the sound and turned. The horses stirred uneasily. The captain barked out an order.
Three men split from the patrol and moved quickly in the direction of the sound.
Emrys signaled for the rest to move on. She didn’t have control of her horse.
She didn’t even know if it had a name. A soldier had been assigned to her, the young private who’d found Copper.
He tugged on her reins, and her horse lurched forward.
The witch hunter must have been warned not to talk to her, because he refused to answer any of her questions.
He never even looked her way, like she might bewitch him with a look.
Following the path that she and Toby had once taken, they continued along the riverbank.
Familiar landmarks appeared strange and dark.
There was the cliff Toby said reminded him of the profile of a king with a crown.
It leered at her as they approached. Once they rounded the curve ahead, they should be able to see the fort jutting above the tree line.
The stark black rock. The crumbling tower.
She’d never wanted to see this place again.
A single rider returned from the woods, racing toward them. He pulled up panting. “Dain has the witch cornered. There’s a cave two miles east. There are multiple familiars blocking the way. I counted at least two, but I heard more.”
The captain turned to shout out an order. His gaze locked on her and he hesitated a moment.
“We’re going after the witch. Garin, follow behind with Mistress Yahl. Keep your distance unless you’re needed. Tie her to a tree if it comes to that.”
“You can’t do that,” she started to argue, but he’d already turned, yelling for his men to follow. She would be dead if they staked her out here in the middle of the rot like a sacrificial goat.
She turned to Garin. “You can’t leave me chained up. I don’t even have a knife to defend myself. Give me the reins at least.”
Garin glared at his brothers in arms, watching them race off to fight the witch. The idiot looked jealous.
He tugged at her reins. “Come on. Let’s find somewhere to watch.”
She could only hold on to the pommel, wondering if her chances of survival would be better if she jumped off and ran back the way they’d come.
The wind picked up, and storm clouds gathered overhead, dark and roiling. The vultures dipped and jerked in the uncertain currents. Lightning split the sky and the ground shuddered.
Her horse reared, jerking back onto its hind legs.
She cried out but managed to hold on. Garin pulled on the reins, yelling at her.
He didn’t see the familiar rushing toward them from the woods.
With one swipe of a clawed hand, it tore into his horse’s shoulder.
Garin drew his sword to face the thing and dropped her reins as he turned.
She lunged over the horse’s neck to try and grab them, but it was no use. She couldn’t reach the reins and her horse took off at a full gallop away from the witch and the fort and the river, running in a blind panic. It was all she could do to hold onto its mane.
And she did at first, hold on as the horse carried her away from the witch faster than she could have hoped.
She hoped Garin survived, but there was nothing she could have done to help him.
She tried to shift her weight as the horse cut first in one direction and then another trying to avoid the trees.
The wind of their passage made her eyes tear up, blinding her almost completely.
Hold on.
Hold on.
Hold on.
And then the horse leapt. She didn’t see the obstacle, she just felt the wild weightlessness as the horse hurled itself into the air. She landed badly on the saddle. One hand tore free of its grip on the horse’s mane.
She lurched sickeningly to the side. She clutched and scrambled and pulled herself upright only to be hit by something. A branch or a tree or a monster.
She had one second to wonder as she was thrown off the horse. This time when she landed, there was only darkness and a whisper following her down...
Daughter of the wood, you’ve come home.