11. Blood Ties #2
I pushed my own bowl aside, appetite gone.
The stew was thin anyway, more water than substance, the kind of meal that kept you alive without keeping you strong.
Around us the mess hall buzzed with the usual noise of children eating, arguing, and forming the alliances that might save or damn them in the years ahead.
“They’ll wait until we’re deep in the forest,” I said, thinking aloud. “Far enough that no one will hear anything. They’ll probably try to lure me off the main path somehow.”
“False trail,” Grit said quietly. “Make you think you’ve found a shortcut.”
“Can you find it before they set it?”
He considered the question for a long moment, then nodded.
“Then we don’t avoid the trap.” I looked at each of them in turn: Maise with her ruined hands, Perrin with his crooked grin, Grit with his empty expression that hid depths I’d never fully understood. “We spring it on our terms.”
Maise leaned forward. “Keep talking.”
“They’re expecting one target, so they’ll spread out to cover escape routes, then close in once I’m isolated. But if we’re already in position when the trap springs, they’re the ones who end up surrounded.”
“Four against six,” Perrin said. “I still don’t love those numbers. ”
“You won’t be fighting directly.” I tapped the table, gathering my thoughts.
“Grit takes their best fighter out of the equation early, quiet, from behind, before they even know we’re there.
Maise holds the exit route so nobody runs for help.
You stay mobile and create confusion with noise and movement, make them think there’s more of us than there are. ”
“And you?”
“I’m the bait. They want me, and they can have me.” I smiled, and it didn’t feel like a seven-year-old’s smile. “Right up until I start cutting.”
Perrin shook his head slowly. “You’re insane, you know that? Properly, actually insane.”
“Probably. But insane has kept me alive this long.”
Maise was already nodding, that hungry light back in her eyes. “I’m in. When do we move?”
“Sundown. The exercise starts at the eighth bell.” I stood, collecting my bowl to return to the kitchen window. “Get what rest you can and wrap those hands. And Perrin, see if you can acquire something sharp that won’t be missed.”
“How sharp?”
“Sharp enough to matter.”
◇ ◆ ◇
We moved when the moon rose fat and yellow through bare branches, letting thirty-eight children scatter into the darkness ahead of us.
The rules were simple. Navigate from the training yard to the marker stone near the old mill, a distance of perhaps two miles through unfamiliar terrain. No torches and no speaking above a whisper. First team to reach the stone with all members intact won extra rations for a week.
Teams formed by instinct and convenience, clusters of four and five drifting into the treeline with varying degrees of confidence.
The older children moved with purpose, already familiar with these woods from previous exercises.
The younger ones stumbled and whispered, trying not to look as lost as they felt.
My team held back, letting the others gain distance before we entered the forest.
“Grit,” I murmured. “Find it.”
He slipped into the shadows without a sound, gone before the word finished leaving my mouth.
Maise flexed her bandaged hands and checked the knife she’d hidden in her boot, a blade Perrin acquired from somewhere he refused to name.
Her knuckles still seeped through the wrappings, dark spots spreading on pale cloth, but her grip was steady.
“Quarter mile in,” Perrin said, appearing at my elbow. “That’s where Cren told the others to wait. There’s a clearing where a lightning-struck oak came down last spring. Good sightlines, multiple approach angles.”
“How do you know all this?”
“I walked it this afternoon and told the gate guard I was checking rabbit snares.” He shrugged. “People don’t watch you when you look like you’re supposed to be somewhere.”
Useful skill. I filed it away for later consideration.
We entered the forest in a loose formation, close enough to see each other in the scattered moonlight but far enough apart that a single attack couldn’t take us all at once.
The trees closed around us, their bare limbs scratching at the darkening sky.
The forest floor was treacherous in the dark, roots and stones hidden beneath drifts of dead leaves that crunched with every step.
I moved carefully, placing each foot before committing my weight, the way Rulfen taught us during the summer navigation courses.
Sound carried at night, and the wrong footfall could announce our position to anyone listening.
And someone was definitely listening.
The Knight Brand pulsed warm along my spine, a steady heat that had grown stronger over the past year.
It couldn’t give me power yet, not while it slept behind whatever barriers Hel had placed around it.
But it could warn me, and right now it was warning me that hostile eyes had found us in the dark.
「The Knight of Swords pulses. Warmth along the spine. Hostile intent detected.」
“They’re watching,” I whispered.
Maise didn’t ask how I knew, because she’d learned not to question the things I sensed that others couldn’t. “How many?”
“At least two, maybe more.” I adjusted our course slightly, angling toward the clearing Perrin described. Let them think they were herding us. Let them think the trap was working. “Stay close and look nervous.”
“I don’t have to look nervous,” Perrin muttered. “I am nervous.”
“Good. Use it.”
The trees thinned as we approached the clearing, and moonlight spilled through the gap where the old oak had come down.
Its trunk still lay across the forest floor, bark peeling away to show pale wood beneath, branches reaching upward like dead fingers.
I spotted the false trail immediately, a narrow path between two standing stones that seemed to lead toward our destination.
The stones were old, worn smooth by centuries of weather, and the path between them would be a natural shortcut for anyone who didn’t know better.
Anyone who took that path would find themselves boxed in with no exit except the way they came.
“There,” I said, loud enough to carry. “That looks like a shorter route.”
Maise played her part well. “Are you sure? It looks too easy.”
“The marker stone should be just past those rocks. Come on.”
We started toward the false trail, and the shadows began to move.
They were good, I’d give them that. Torvald’s crew had been in these woods before, and they knew how to use the darkness.
Two of them circled wide to cut off our retreat while the others closed in from the flanks.
By the time we reached the standing stones, we’d be surrounded.
Except we weren’t going to the standing stones.
“Now,” I said.
Maise broke left, moving fast and low through the underbrush until she reached a massive oak at the clearing’s edge. She put her back against the trunk and drew her knife, covering the only clear path back toward the estate.
Perrin broke right and immediately started making noise. He crashed through bushes, snapped branches, and let out a sharp whistle that rang through the trees. In the dark, with adrenaline pumping, it sounded like four or five people instead of one.
I stayed exactly where I was .
“Come on then,” I called out, voice carrying across the clearing. “You’ve been following us for half a mile, so either show yourselves or go back to bed.”
Silence, then rustling as plans adjusted on the fly. Torvald came out from behind the fallen oak, a heavy cudgel in his hands. He was bigger than I remembered, shoulders broad enough to block the moonlight, and his face wore the expression of someone who’d already decided how this ended.
“Smart little bastard, aren’t you?” His voice was deeper than a fourteen-year-old’s should be. “Figured out we were coming.”
“Wasn’t hard. You’ve been watching me for days.” I didn’t draw my blade yet, letting him think I was trying to talk my way out. “Who promised you the acknowledged barracks?”
Surprise flickered across his face, then anger that his secret had gotten loose.
“Doesn’t matter who. What matters is you’re not leaving this clearing alive.” He gestured and four more shapes stepped out of the darkness, surrounding me in a loose half-circle. “Your friends can run if they want. This is between you and us.”
“My friends aren’t running.”
“Then they’ll die too.” Torvald took a step forward, cudgel rising. “Last chance, runt. Make it quick or make it slow. Your choice.”
“You’re missing someone,” I said.
He paused, counted the faces around him, and realized.
“Where’s Cren?”
The answer came from behind him. Grit had dropped from the branches of the fallen oak and put a knife through the side of Cren’s neck, moments before I’d made my opening gambit.
The smart bastard who organized the whole thing died without a sound, just a wet gurgle as he crumpled into the dead leaves.
Grit was already moving, vanishing back into the darkness before anyone could react. Six became five.
Torvald roared. He charged.
I drew my blade and stepped forward to meet him.
He was bigger, stronger, and faster than me. None of that mattered as much as he thought it did.
The first swing of his cudgel would have caved in my skull if I’d been standing still.
I was already moving, ducking under the arc, driving my blade toward his leading knee.
Steel bit cloth and skin, drawing a line of red across his thigh that made him stumble.
Not deep enough to cripple, but deep enough to hurt.
“Little shit,” he snarled, recovering faster than I expected. His backswing came low and mean, aimed at my ribs. I barely got my blade up in time to deflect it. The impact traveled through my arms, numbing my fingers, and I gave ground before he could press the advantage.
Around us the clearing erupted.