Chapter 41 Forgiveness
Forgiveness
Once again, Niel found himself marching through wintry conditions with a troop of soldiers.
Except before, he’d been at the head, leading them while his brother's army chased them. Now, that same army had caught him, and he walked with his arms bound behind his back and his ankles chained together. Two ropes were knotted around his midsection, each leading to another rider’s saddle, pulling him on.
The men towing Niel were knights he recognized from his time in Liron: Sir Herdan, a warrior with decades of experience, and Sir Melchior, a knight as young and green as Niel himself.
Some of Corin’s soldiers had headed back to Ironcliff city, but the bulk were here, marching south to rest before Spring brought another assault from the north.
He wasn’t sure where his own soldiers were, but if they were marching south as prisoners of the same army as Niel, they were too far back in the column for him to tell.
It was an easy pace. The Kettalist’s terrain had been rugged, but now they marched through a wood that neighbored the Hulder’s, studiously careful to keep to their own path.
It was a longer route to Liron than a straight line, but nobody was foolish enough to suggest crossing into the immortal Queen’s wood.
A pair of soldiers or knights could do so without attracting wrath, but a thousand men marching in columns would be a sure violation of the treaty that kept the Hulder bound.
Niel found himself looking east, wondering how hard it would be to disappear into the Hulder wood. He could live happily enough as a hermit. It wasn’t as though he liked many people. If he could just get his shackles off, he could lose them at the other forest’s border.
A sharp tug at his waist threatened to topple him forward, a reminder he was not keeping pace with the horses in front of him.
Niel turned his focus back to the path before him and continued to trudge.
At least the warhorses and men ahead of him broke through the thick snows, leaving a trampled path that was easier to walk.
With a heavy, ice-cold chain clanking between his feet and weighing down every step, he needed the help.
Thudding hoofbeats sounded as riders churned through the snow.
Niel turned his head to the side and watched bleakly as his brother and another knight cantered up the line.
Corin’s black warhorse was stark against the snows.
It reminded Niel of the way the Kettalist firs looked against the icy mountains, giant and ink-dark, and for a moment his mind was back at Blackfell.
Pain burrowed into him like a shard of glass.
He pushed it down and forced himself back to numbness.
It was over. He had to believe Ayla was well on her way to safety.
He’d kept silent as his brother questioned him about the lady’s whereabouts.
A thorough search of the castle had not turned her up, which meant she’d found the cloak and used it.
It had to be enough to keep her safe. He had to believe that, because there was nothing more Niel could do now, and nothing else he cared about.
“How goes it?” the knight riding with Corin called. Niel recognized the older, red-haired man as Sir Anton of Yovren, Corin’s former knight-master. The man Corin credited with making him less of a brute. Niel bent his gaze down to the snow and continued to trudge.
“Well enough,” Sir Melchior said.
“Better than well. We’re pointed south,” Sir Herdan said cheerfully.
They’d been marching for three days already, with the luxuriously slow pace of an army leaving a battlefield, and Herdan had expressed the same sentiment a good half-dozen times already.
Niel recalled distantly that the man had a wife and children waiting for him at Liron.
“We’re not far from Stromacre,” Corin said. “There’ll be a path from there.”
“You’ll be off, then?” Herdan asked.
Niel looked up sharply, but kept walking. His thighs burned as he lifted each step clear of the broken snow. His brother was leaving?
He knew the name Stromacre, if he could just place it. There were so many tiny, nothing-towns in the kingdom it was hard to keep track of them all, even with how many hours Niel had spent poring over maps in preparation for the war.
“Aye,” Corin said. For a moment he met Niel’s gaze. Then Corin’s eyes returned to the path ahead. “Make sure nothing happens before I’m back.”
“We’ll tell her you said as much,” Herdan said.
“Don’t just tell her. Make sure of it,” Corin said. “There will be no executions before my return.”
“That eager to see my blood yourself?” Niel’s voice came out as a rasp, and he realized these were the first words he’d said in days. “Perhaps you miss the old days.”
“Enough,” Corin told him. There was a dark glint in his brother’s eye, and Corin’s jaw set. Niel's brother wheeled his warhorse and charged back down the line. Sir Anton followed, with a look Niel could only interpret as pitying.
He’d finally placed Stromacre. If Corin rode to the town, and past it, he wouldn’t be far from Yovren castle.
The county’s seat, where Corin’s squire training with Sir Anton had been based out of, was buried deep in the Hulder wood on the county road.
It irritated him that Corin was larking off to another castle, and what Niel could only imagine was a social visit. But Corin could do what he wanted.
What was the point in being jealous now?
It was all coming to an end. Just like he’d always known.
Only now, he found himself regretting the war.
It all seemed so foolish, throwing himself headlong into a war just for revenge on Hannes.
He could have dueled or assassinated the knight instead of setting out to conquer Ashbrin and burn it to the ground.
He could have revealed the truth at court and let them all judge, instead of keeping quiet in shame.
Living was revenge. Happiness was revenge. Ayla had taught him that. And if it was a lesson he’d learned too late, at least he had learned it.
And at least Ayla had gotten away from Blackfell. He’d achieved that much. Where was she now? He hoped she wasn't cold.
They camped on the road itself. No clearing in these parts was large enough to hold the great number of warriors and wagons traveling south.
They unbound Niel’s hands for a moment to shackle them in front of him instead, then led him away to a spot in the forest where he could piss, surrounded by armed men, and feeling rather like a dog.
Melchior swept the ground beside a tree clear of snow and covered it with a pelt. Niel allowed the other knight to tie his shackles around the tree-trunk, and then his waist. Melchior's copper-brown face was grim as he worked, and he would not meet Niel’s eyes.
Niel leaned back against his tree and watched as the soldiers around him split into smaller camps.
He still couldn’t see his own men, but nor could he see clear to the end of the sprawling army that was marching Niel south.
Modest fires sprung to life up and down the road, for warmth and cooking.
Herdan snapped open a blanket and dropped it on Niel’s knees.
Even with his hands shackled in front of him, Niel couldn’t move them more than a few inches forward, tight as the rope around the tree had him bound.
He strained to reach the edge of the blanket, drawing his knees in closer.
The iron shackles bit into his skin through his clothes.
His fingers skimmed the edge of the blanket and he grasped it, drawing it up further over his body against the cold.
“Water, lad?” the older man asked, as if Niel was just a boy. Herdan stood over him, his hips level with Niel’s head. Shackled, Niel couldn’t move.
Unexpected fear bowled through him, savagely fast. Despite the cold, Niel felt sweat prickling down his back and on his forehead. He couldn’t move his legs, couldn’t move his arms. Was at their mercy for warmth, food, water.
It was years since he’d felt so helpless.
All the same he forced himself to tilt back his head for the waterskin when it came, and let the icy liquid fill his mouth, and tried not to shudder or spit it out.
He breathed through his nose, long drags of frigid air.
Herdan gave him an odd look and walked away. Niel’s shoulders slowly unclenched.
Bradhan was making his way over. Niel could see his distinctive gait from a distance, as he hopped forward, planted the two crutches he’d acquired since being freed, and hopped again. The Ashbrin heir wove his way between cooking-fires and nodded in response to Herdan and Melchior’s greeting.
“I’m just heating a cider,” Niel heard Herdan offer. Niel's former captive shook his head no, and hopped the rest of the way to Niel, his face tight with determination and obvious pain. Bradhan looked pale, and there were dark circles beneath his eyes.
Niel braced himself for one of the crutches to ram into him.
No doubt Bradhan would have his revenge, now that Niel was the one in shackles.
Over the past few days plenty of soldiers had taken their time to land a discreet blow or spit on him when they thought the two knights guarding him would not notice.
“I need to know,” Bradhan said, coming to a stop with the crutches slightly in front of his foot. “Why did he go to Ashbrin?”
“What?” Niel frowned in surprise.
“You must know. What is he doing there?”
“...Corin?” Niel asked, still braced for the blow. He’d been certain his brother was headed to Yovren with his former knight-master, off to visit the castle he’d spent four years training out of to earn his shield.
But then, Yovren was about as south as castle Ashbrin. And if Corin cut through the Hulder wood to reach Yovren, from there, the Dracheban road would connect the county seat to the March of Ashbrin. Could his brother be headed there instead?
A dense weight settled in Niel’s stomach at just the thought of that place.
“Is it something to do with it all?” Bradhan asked. “With why you hate us?”
Niel stared in disbelief. There was nobody to overhear them. Why was Bradhan feigning innocence?
“You must know,” Niel said flatly.
“I wish I did. Will you tell me, Niel? What insult did my uncle give that you find so hard to forgive?”
“Nobody’s listening,” Niel said, noting that Melchior and Herdan were engrossed in their own tasks, Melchior caring for the two warhorses while Herdan heated drink and food over the fire. “You don’t need to play the fool.”
Bradhan only blinked at him.
“Was it something he said?” Bradhan asked.
Niel clenched his jaw and didn’t answer.
He stared straight ahead instead of looking at the other knight.
Ayla had asked if Bradhan even knew. But surely a man would know if there were monsters in his own family.
Surely every Ashbrin had known who Hannes was, especially after Niel’s father went to court to demand Hannes be punished.
Even if the Queen had declined to do so.
He heard Bradhan sigh heavily.
“I wish,” the older knight said, his words slow and careful, “we needn’t have been enemies. Corin told me of the difficulties he caused you. I don’t hate you, Niel, for all I probably should. I wish there was something I could say, to make you hate me less.”
Bradhan turned awkwardly, crutches thudding softly against the snow as he struggled to maneuver.
There was no reason for him to pretend now, with Niel in chains.
“You just said it,” Niel told him. Bradhan glanced over his shoulder.
“What?”
“You really don’t know. What he is? What he did to me?”
Bradhan’s forehead creased, his lips parting slightly.
“What are you on about, Niel?”
Niel tried to swallow the lump in his throat.
“I should not have tried to kill you,” Niel rasped. “I was owed revenge. But none of us can help our bloodline. I am sorry for that.”
He couldn’t regret Bradhan’s leg, which had been lost trying to take back Blackfell. But the rest of it. The tournament at Liron; the near-execution in the castle courtyard.
Perhaps, he finally admitted, Bradhan was not his enemy. The world held monsters, but it was also full of ordinary people simply living their lives.
Bradhan kept staring at him for a long moment, the knight’s brow still knotted. Niel had looked away again, but he could feel the man’s gaze on him. It felt like ages before Bradhan limped away. Niel slumped back against the tree and closed his eyes.
He could hear two soldiers fighting at the fire over from theirs. One of them had set down his bowl of supper and was sure the other had taken it; the other insisted the bowl he was holding was his own. They sounded moments away from brawling.
“Here, Niel,” Herdan said. Niel opened his eyes to find the older knight squatting by the fire, looking at him levelly. The cold wind prickled at the damp of Niel's eyes. “You’ll stay put if I let you feed yourself, won’t you?”
Niel nodded, feeling exhausted suddenly. Herdan loosened the rope on his wrist’s shackles, but left the one around Niel’s waist. Then a hot cup of cider and a steaming bowl of porridge and boiled hare were in Niel’s hands. He didn’t care how bland the meal was. It was hot.
“Thank you,” he mumbled, as Herdan turned away.
The older knight gave him a surprised look, then nodded with a soft smile.
Had he really been so thorny in the past, that those two words surprised Herdan?
The older knight was one of Corin’s friends.
There was no telling what things his brother might have said to the man.
Niel’s stomach clenched unpleasantly, but he was too hungry, cold, and exhausted to be put off the meal.